Picture of Archimedes
Corbis-Bettmann. From photograph of sculpture in the National Museum, Naples.
Archimedes
Archimedes was a Greek mathematician and engineer who lived between
287-212 B.C. His greatest contributions are in the field of geometry, where he identified the relationship of a sphere and cylinder's volume.
Archimedes discovered the principle of the lever and the importance of
the fulcrum, stating imperiously,
"Give me a lever and I can move the world". He is also credited with the
buoyancy principle, which gives the weight of an object floating in a liquid
based on the weight of liquid the object displaces.
Legend has it that Archimedes developed war machines for Greece, such
as catapults, cranes, and giant lenses which focused sunlight to burn
Roman ships in the Rome-Carthage war.
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