Archimedes was one of the World’s greatest polymaths.

 

He was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, engineer, inventor, and weapon-designer. As we’ll see, he was a man who was both of his time and far ahead of his time. Archimedes was born in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in approximately 287 BCE.

 

He directly inspired Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton to investigate the mathematics of motion. Archimedes’ surviving works (tragically, many have been lost) finally made it into print in 1544. Leonardo da Vinci was lucky enough to see some of the hand-copied works of Archimedes before they were eventually printed.

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