Archimedes

Archimedes was a mathematician, physicist and engineer of ancient Syracuse in Sicily, widely regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of antiquity. He developed a technique, the method of exhaustion, for calculating the areas and volumes of curved shapes by approximating them with a sequence of simpler shapes whose combined area or volume converges toward the true value, an approach that anticipated key ideas of integral calculus roughly two thousand years before calculus was formally developed, and he used it to calculate a highly accurate approximation of pi and to determine the volume and surface area of a sphere, a result he reportedly considered his greatest personal achievement. In physics, Archimedes formulated the principle now bearing his name describing the upward buoyant force on an object submerged in a fluid, a discovery later ages retold through the story of him leaping from his bath shouting eureka, and he laid foundational groundwork for the study of levers and mechanical advantage. Archimedes also designed a number of practical and military devices, including a screw-shaped device for raising water still used in irrigation today, and defensive war machines credited with helping to prolong Roman general Marcellus's siege of Syracuse, during which Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier in 212 BCE despite orders that he be taken alive.