Bits and Beyond...
ARCHIMEDES
Archimedes (298-212 B.C.)
was a great mathematician of the ancient times. He was a native of
Syracuse, Sicily. He spent some time in Egypt, where he
invented a mechanical water pump, now called Archimedes' screw. His
greatest contributions were in the field of geometry. In his work, Measurement
of the Circle, he approximated the value of pi by inscribing and
circumscribing a circle with a 96-sided regular polygon. Archimedes
made many contributions to geometry with his work on the areas and volumes
of plane figures and curved surfaces. His methods provided the framework
for calculus, which was introduced later by Sir Isaac Newton. Archimedes
showed that the volume of an inscribed sphere is two-thirds the volume of
the cylinder circumscribing it. He requested that this formula and the
corresponding diagram be inscribed on his tomb. Some of his known
works include: The Measurement of a Circle, On the Sphere and Cylinder,
On Spirals, and The Sand Reckoner.
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