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Archimedes Obituary

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Archimedes Obituary
Michael Rice
Applying math to real life
September 3, 2010 Obituary for Archimedes of Syracuse Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Italy in 287 B.C. His father was Pheidias, who happened to be an astronomer. He studied at Alexandria, Egypt. He was also close friends with the King of Syracuse. He died in 212 B.C. Archimedes performed numerous geometric proofs using the rigid geometric formalism outlined by Euclid, excelling especially at computing areas and volumes using the method of exhaustion. He was especially proud of his discovery for finding the volume of a sphere, showing that it is two thirds the volume of the smallest cylinder that can contain it. At his request, the figure of a sphere and cylinder was engraved on his tombstone.

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