| 9780802716187 |
| (hardcover) |
| 0802716180 |
Available:*
Library | Material Type | Call Number | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... East Library | Book | 509.2 A673H | Biography | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
The extraordinary genius of Archimedes - scientist, mathematician, engineer and showman.
Author Notes
Alan Hirshfeld is a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and an associate of the Harvard College Observatory. He is the author of The Electric Life of Michael Faraday and Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos . He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
One of the most famous scientists of antiquity, Archimedes was renowned for his wizardry in pure mathematics as well as for applied science, building defensive devices that helped ancient Syracuse temporarily hold off a Roman assault.University of Massachusetts Dartmouth science prof Hirshfeld (The Electric Life of Michael Faraday) offers a lively look at the work underlying Archimedes' renown. The second part of the book shifts gears to trace the fortunes of the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest, a parchment with a Byzantine-era religious work written over an ancient text by Archimedes. Since it was rediscovered in the early 1900s, scientists have used ultraviolet and X-ray scanning techniques to identify the original underlying works, long believed lost, and uncover the startling fact that Archimedes discovered the calculus almost 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. Science fans will find this a quick read, and readers interested in the transmission of ancient manuscripts will be fascinated by Hirshfeld's account of the palimpsest (a tale also recounted in 2007's The Archimedes Codex). 8 pages of color illus., 15 b&w illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
For this account of one of antiquity's most renowned mathematicians, Hirshfeld combines three elements: a biography, accessible presentations of several mathematical proofs, and a narrative of the recent recovery of long-lost texts. The last, detailed in The Archimedes Codex (2007), by Reviel Netz and William Noel, loses no intellectual drama in Hirshfeld's briefer treatment, and his work's clarity in the biography and math departments confirms the facility for popular science that Hirshfeld displayed in Parallax (2001) and The Electric Life of Michael Faraday (2006). Perceiving Archimedes' personality, observes Hirshfeld, depends on sources that were more amazed by his war machines than by his pure mathematics (which impressed Renaissance figures such as Galileo more than the ancients). Said to have devised the defenses of Syracuse, Archimedes came up with the ingenious gadgets that held off the Romans until they sacked the city in 212 BCE, with one legionary killing the genius in the process. And whether or not a naked Archimedes really ran around yelling Eureka, the story's too good, among others, to omit from Hirshfeld's fine portrayal.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist
