Panta sozomena. Archimedis opera quae extant. Novis demonstrationibus commentarisque illustrata.

1615

Shoults Fc 1615 A

[Paris]: Claudius Morellus

A mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer and inventor, Archimedes (287-212 BC) was perhaps ‘the ablest scientific genius’ of his age and possibly of all time. Most people are familiar with Archimedes’s supposed ‘Eureka’ moment but they may not know of his work in hydrostatics, principles of the lever, and inventions of siege engines for war. The work on display is known as The Sand-Reckoner in which Archimedes, addressing King Gelo of Syracuse, explains how he attempts to calculate how many grains of sand it would take to fill the universe. Archimedes first had to develop a system of naming very large numbers, the first of its kind, with the largest being a 1 with 80 x 10¹⁵ zeroes following. Upon reaching his conclusion Archimedes assures King Gelo that he is likely to understand his calculations since the king is a maths scholar himself.