Archimedes Archimedes (about 287 ~ 2 12) was a famous mathematician and physicist in ancient Greece and the founder of statics and hydrostatics. He is also a legend. In 287 BC, Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Sicily (now Syracuse, Italy). He was born into a noble family and was related to Hennon, king of Syracuse. His family is very rich. Archimedes's father was an astronomer and mathematician, knowledgeable and humble. At the age of eleven, with the help of his relationship with the royal family, he was sent to Alexandria, the cultural center of ancient Greece. He studied under Euclid's students erato Sese and Cannon, and he kept close contact with scholars in Alexandria in the future, so he was a member of the Alexandria School.

Alexandria, located at the mouth of the Nile, was one of the centers of cultural trade at that time. There are magnificent museums, libraries and talented people here, which are praised as "the capital of wisdom" by the world. Archimedes studied and lived here for many years and had close contacts with many scholars. He was interested in mathematics, mechanics and astronomy during his study. When he was studying astronomy, he invented a planetary instrument driven by water conservancy, and used it to simulate the movement of the sun, planets and the moon and perform an eclipse of the sun and the moon. In order to solve the problem of irrigating land with Nile water, he invented a cylindrical spiral water lifter, which was later called "Archimedes spiral".

In 240 BC, Archimedes returned to Syracuse and became a consultant to King Henon, helping him solve various scientific and technological problems in production practice, military technology and daily life.

In 2 12 BC, the Roman army captured Syracuse, and Archimedes, who was absorbed in scientific problems, was unfortunately killed by outrageous Roman soldiers at the age of 75. Archimedes' body is buried in Sicily, and the tombstone is engraved with a figure of a cylinder engraved with a ball to commemorate his outstanding contribution to geometry. Archimedes is a great mathematician and mechanic and enjoys the reputation of "the father of hydrostatics". He discovered the lever principle through a lot of experiments, and deduced many lever propositions by geometric methods, and gave strict proofs, including the famous Archimedes principle (lever principle).

Archimedes

He has also made brilliant achievements in mathematics, especially in geometry. His mathematical thought contains the idea of calculus. What he lacks is the concept of limit, but the essence of his thought extends to the increasingly mature infinitesimal analysis field in17th century, and indicates the birth of calculus.

Because of his outstanding contribution, American E.T. Bell used mathematical figures to evaluate Archimedes: Any open list of the three greatest mathematicians of all time will definitely include Archimedes, while the other two are usually isaac newton and C.F. Gauss, but compared with its brilliant achievements and background of the times, or its far-reaching influence on the present and future generations, Archimedes should be the first to be promoted.

Except isaac newton and Albert Einstein, no one has made such a great contribution to human progress as Archimedes. Even Newton and Einstein used to draw wisdom and inspiration from him. He is "the ideal embodiment of the combination of theoretical genius and experimental genius", and Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei in the Renaissance took him as a model.