Archimedes. 287-212 BC. Greek mathematician, engineer, and physicist.
"Soldier,
stand away from my diagram." Supposedly spoken by Archimedes to the
Roman soldier who killed him.
"Eureka! - I have found it!"
"Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth."
"There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics."
Perhaps the best indication of what Archimedes truly loved most is his
request that his tombstone include a
cylinder circumscribing a
sphere, accompanied by the
inscription of his amazing theorem
that the sphere is exactly two-thirds of the circumscribing cylinder in
both surface area and volume!" Laubenbacher and Pengelley, p. 95
The works of Archimedes are without exception, monuments of
mathematical exposition; the gradual
revelation of the plan of attack, the masterly ordering of the
propositions, the stern elimination of everything not
immediately relevant to the purpose, the finish of the whole, are so
impressive in their perfection as to create a feeling akin to awe in the
mind of the reader. A History of Greek Mathematics. 1921. Heath, Sir
Thomas L. Heath.
Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist by Reviel Netz, William Noel.
From Barnes & Noble:
The history of mathematics can't be properly told without mention of Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 B.C.-c. 212 B.C.), yet this ancient Greek very nearly disappeared from history. His known body of work was contained in three manuscripts, two of which have vanished. The third survived thanks to a 13th-century monastic scribe who copied a devotional book onto a previously used palimpsest. It was not until 1906 that a scholar discovered that an imperfectly erased mathematical text lay beneath. The Archimedes Codex tells the story of this discovery, the recovery of seven long-lost treatises, and how they have changed the history of mathematics and science.
