Archimedes stands as the greatest mathematician of antiquity and a mad scientist before the term existed. While most people know him for shouting "Eureka," his actual life involved defending his city with giant claws and death rays. He treated geometry like a competitive sport and often forgot to eat while solving problems. Furthermore, his inventions were so advanced that they terrified the most powerful army in the world. Prepare to calculate the brilliance of the man who claimed he could move the Earth.
Archimedes
Legend says he ran naked through the streets after a bathtub realization. When he noticed the water level rising as he stepped into his bath, he suddenly understood displacement. Consequently, he sprinted through Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” without remembering to put his clothes back on.
He designed a massive iron claw to defend his city from invaders. The “Claw of Archimedes” swung from the city walls and hooked onto enemy ships. Then, the machine lifted the vessels out of the water and shook them until they capsized.
His tombstone featured a sphere inside a cylinder. He considered his proof regarding the relationship between these two shapes his greatest achievement. Decades later, the Roman orator Cicero found the overgrown grave by recognizing this specific geometric carving.
He allegedly built a heat ray using mirrors to burn Roman ships. By focusing sunlight onto the wooden sails of the approaching fleet, he reportedly set them on fire from a distance. Although modern scientists debate if this actually worked, the story remains one of his most famous legends.
He single-handedly pulled a fully loaded ship onto the shore. To prove the power of his compound pulley system to King Hiero, he sat comfortably in a chair and pulled a single rope. As a result, the massive vessel moved across the sand as smoothly as if it were on water.
He approximated the value of Pi with incredible accuracy. By drawing polygons with ninety-six sides inside and outside a circle, he narrowed down the value of the mathematical constant. Thus, he established the limits that mathematicians used for centuries.
A Roman soldier killed him because he refused to stop doing math. When the soldier ordered him to move, Archimedes replied, “Do not disturb my circles.” Unfortunately, this defiance caused the soldier to draw his sword and end the life of the genius.
He invented a screw that can make water flow uphill. The Archimedes Screw uses a rotating spiral inside a tube to lift liquid from lower levels. Farmers and engineers still use this simple yet brilliant device for irrigation today.
He tried to count the number of grains of sand in the universe. In his work The Sand Reckoner, he invented a new system for large numbers to calculate how much sand would fill the cosmos. He concluded that the universe could hold roughly nearly 10 to the power of 63 grains.
He stated that he could move the entire Earth if he had a place to stand. This famous quote illustrated his absolute confidence in the mechanical advantage of levers. He understood that with a long enough lever and a fulcrum, weight becomes irrelevant.
He created one of the first odometers to measure distance. His design dropped a small stone into a box after every mile the cart traveled. Therefore, travelers could simply count the stones at the end of the trip to know how far they had gone.
The Roman general Marcellus ordered his soldiers to capture Archimedes alive. The general possessed such great respect for the inventor’s mind that he wanted to meet him personally. Sadly, the soldier who killed the mathematician disobeyed these direct orders.
He likely studied in Alexandria with other great minds of the time. Historians believe he traveled to Egypt to learn from the successors of Euclid. While there, he befriended Eratosthenes, the man who calculated the circumference of the Earth.
He forgot to eat and bathe when he focused on geometry. Plutarch wrote that servants often had to force him to wash and anoint his body. Even then, he would trace geometric figures in the oil on his skin.
Finally, he discovered the principle of buoyancy that explains why boats float. He realized that an object immersed in fluid experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. This law of physics remains fundamental to shipbuilding and engineering.
