Education: How Old The NewWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Education: How Old The New
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Education -- History
The well-known story of his discovery in hydrostatics, by which he was
enabled to tell the King whether the royal goldsmiths had made his
crown of solid gold or not, is very well authenticated. Archimedes
realized the application of the principle of specific gravity in the
solution of such problems while he was taking a bath. Quite forgetful
of his state of nudity he ran through the streets, crying "Eureka!
Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!" There are many other
significant developments of hydrostatics and mechanics, besides
specific gravity and the lever, the germs of which are at least
attributed to Archimedes. He seems to have been one of the world's
great eminent practical geniuses. That he should have been a product
of Alexandria and should even have been a professor there would be a
great surprise if we did not know Alexandria as a great scientific
university. As it is, it is quite easy to understand how naturally he
finds his place in the history of that university and how proud any
modern university would be to have on the rolls of its students and
professors a man who not only developed pure science but who made a
series of practical applications that are of great value to mankind.
Such men our modern universities appropriately claim the right to
vaunt proudly as the products of their training.
When we analyze something of the work in {77} pure mathematics that
was accomplished by Archimedes our estimation of him is greatly
enhanced. His work "On the Quadrature," that is the finding of the
area of a segment of the parabola, is probably his most significant
contribution to mathematical knowledge. His proof of the principal
theorem in this is obtained by the "method of exhaustion," which had
been invented by Eudoxus but was greatly developed by Archimedes. This
method contains in itself the germ of that most powerful instrument of
mathematical analysis in the modern time, the calculus.
Another very important work was "The Sphere and the Cylinder." This
was more appreciated in his own time, and as a consequence, after his
death the figure of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder was cut on his
tomb in commemoration of his favorite theorem, that the volume of the
sphere is two-thirds that of the cylinder and its surface is four
times that of the base of the cylinder. It was by searching for this
symbol, famous in antiquity, that Cicero was enabled to find his tomb
according to the story that I have already related.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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