Math essay

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The Biography and Contribution of Archimedes of Syracuse to the Field of Mathematics
Background
Archimedes was born in 287BC and died in 212BC at 75 years. Archimedes of Syracuse was born in Syracuse – Sicily- Greece. He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time amongst Carl Gauss and Isaac Newton. He was a Greek mathematician, engineer, astronomer and physicist (New York University 2006).
He was the son Phidias, an astronomer. There is no much record of Phidias or his mother in history. However, he is believed to be a kin of Hiero II, King of Syracuse. Archimedes spent most of his life in the historical town of Syracuse (capital of Sicily) except when he travelled to Alexandria- Egypt to study. He studied astronomy, mathematics and physics at The University of Alexandria which was founded by Euclid (the great mathematician). There is no record of his family or siblings.
Writings
During his lifetime, Archimedes published a few books/publications concerning his research and findings. These writings are:
On the sphere and cylinder
Measurement of a circle
On conoids and spheroids
On spirals
On the equilibrium of planes and its centre of gravity
Quadrature of the parabola
The sand-reckoner
On floating bodies
Book of Lemmas
The method of mechanical problems
Archimedes’ principle
One day, as he was taking a bath, he realized that the more he immersed himself in the water, the more it was overflowing. He found it very exciting and ran through the streets naked shouting “eureka eureka”. Eureka means “I have found it” (Dericks 36). This is how he discovered the “Buoyancy principle” later developed to up-thrust force, Archimedes’ principle etcetera. After this, he was given the task of determining the purity of the gold of the crown worn by King Hiero II of Syracuse. In his work, he applied the “eureka” scene and discovered a way to measure the density of an irregular object and also found that the crown was not of pure g...