Absent-minded mathematician

Many great people who lived in the distant past have not bequeathed to posterity any practical contribution to science and arts. However, there are a few exceptions to this general rule. For instance, Archimedes of Syracuse, a Greek mathematician, was an exceptional human being whose contribution to geometry, hydrostatics and mechanics is monumental.

Archimedes goes down history as the man who ran naked along a busy street repeating just one word over and over again. The unusual spectacle stopped the rattle of the carts moving along the busy main street of the Sicilian town. The few women who happened to witness the naked man were horrified. Although many onlookers thought that he was a mad man, some people recognized him. However, they had to wait till the following day to find out why Archimedes ran naked along the street.

The story behind Archimedes' running naked will remain interesting for many more centuries. As historians tell us, Hiero, the king of Syracuse, had commissioned a goldsmith to make a crown out of pure gold. However, when the crown was delivered to him, the king had suspicious that the gold in making the crown. Then he ordered the renowned mathematician Archimedes to find out whether the goldsmith had actually used inferior metal.

Even Archimedes was puzzled for a few days not knowing how to find whether only pure gold had been used to make the crown. One day he went to the public and stood at the edge of the bath tub. Then he lowered himself to the bath tub while thinking of the knotty problem he had to solve. All of a sudden he jumped out of the bath tub shouting loudly "Eureka! Eureka!" (I have found it! I have found it!).

After returning home, Archimedes did a few more experiments and found that a body plunged in a fluid lost an amount of its weight which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by it. Thus Archimedes was able to tell the king how much pure gold was there in the crown.

Archimedes' father Pheidias happened to be a kinsman of king Hiero. While Archimedes was busy making inventions useful to man, the king commissioned him to make weapons of mass destruction to be used in the event of a war with his enemies. Sometimes it was strange on the part of the king to order an absent-minded mathematician to make war weapons. However, instead of asking for a fully equipped laboratory or other facilities, Archimedes wanted only a lever and a place on which to rest it to "move the world".

History records how Archimedes surprised the Roman General Marcellus who laid siege to Syracuse. When the enemy ships plunged to the bottom of the sea one by one. Marcellus had to call a special conference of his engineers to counter the machines invented by Archimedes.

What is stranger is that Archimedes was not at all proud or happy with his deadly weapons. In fact, he despised the mechanical contrivances that made him famous. This may be one reason why he did not leave behind any record of such weapons of destruction. He thought that his inventions were beneath the dignity of pure science. Even the books he had written remain lost for ever.

Even in the absence of his writings, historians and the scientific community consider him to be a great mathematician. He is perhaps the only ancient mathematician who had contributed anything of real value to the theory of mechanics.

Today we consider Archimedes as a pioneer mathematician and a genius. However, we do not know much about him as a human being.

The little information available shows that he was at times a strange man who could not be fathomed easily. Sometimes he had to be taken to the baths by force. It is said that during his ablutions Archimedes had drawn geometrical designs on the soapsuds on his body! Meanwhile, whenever he solved a mathematical problem, Archimedes beamed with happiness like a child.

Although Archimedes was able to keep the invading army at bay for nearly three years. Syracuse fell in 212 B.C. and he too was killed eventually. But we do not remember him today as the brilliant inventor of arms but as the absent-minded mathematician who ran naked along the street!

Even when Syracuse was overrun by the Roman army, Archimedes might have remained nonchalant. He would have been drawing his geometrical figures quite unmindful of his impending fate. Roman General Marcellus was so grieved by the death of Archimedes that he had bestowed special favours on the relatives of the slain mathematician. But the human race will never see another Archimedes. Instead, they will see more and more hollow men invading every field of human activity.