Archimedis Opera Omnia
ISBN: 9781139854931
Platform/Publisher: Cambridge Core / Cambridge University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited

Published in 1880-1, this three-volume edition of the extant works of the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (c.287-c.212 BCE) was edited by the Danish philologist and historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1854-1928), whose Quaestiones Archimedeae (1879) is also reissued in this series. He later discovered a medieval palimpsest containing lost works by Archimedes, which significantly expanded the canon, but the present collection was produced long before this and therefore contains the works known at the time of publication. Heiberg consulted a Florentine codex, which he painstakingly compared with other sources to produce his edition. This third volume contains the editor's Latin prolegomena - his own extended essay on the works of Archimedes - followed by the commentaries on Archimedes by Eutocius of Ascalon (c.480-c.540) and indexes. The texts are given in the original Greek with parallel Latin translation, notes and introductory material.

Archimedes was a mathematician and inventor, born in Syracuse, Sicily, about 287 B.C. He became famous for his law of the lever and for inventing the catapult, parabolic mirror, and the mechanical crane that was capable of capsizing a ship by overturning it. These inventions were designed to defend Syracuse during the Second Punic War, which were waged between Rome and Carthage.

While Archimedes made fundamental contributions to physics, his greatest contributions were to theoretical mathematics. Some of his works have come down to us.

When Syracuse was taken in 212 B.C., Archimedes was killed by the Roman soldiers, being at the time intent upon a mathematical problem.


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