(born in Syracuse, Sicily 287 bC – died in Syracuse, Sicily 212 bC)
Was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity.
Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of Pi. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulas for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers.
Archimedes was able to use infinitesimals in a way that is similar to modern integral calculus. By assuming a proposition to be true and showing that this would lead to a contradiction, he could give answers to problems to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, while specifying the limits within which the answer lay. In Measurement of a Circle, Archimedes gives the value of the square root of 3 as being more than 265/153 (approximately 1.7320261) and less than 1351/780 (approximately 1.7320512). The actual value is approximately 1.7320508, making this a very accurate estimate. He introduced this result without offering any explanation of the method used to obtain it.
In The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes set out to calculate the number of grains of sand that the universe could contain. In doing so, he challenged the notion that the number of grains of sand was too large to be counted.
Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere inscribed within a cylinder. Archimedes had proved that the sphere has two thirds of the volume and surface area of the cylinder (including the bases of the latter), and regarded this as the greatest of his mathematical achievements.
Citar este texto en formato APA: _______. (2010). WEBSCOLAR. Archimedes of Syracuse (biografía en Inglés). https://www.webscolar.com/archimedes-of-syracuse-biografia-en-ingles. Fecha de consulta: 21 de noviembre de 2024.