Eureka Man

Eureka Man

“Eureka!” That’s what the ancient Greek polymath Archimedes (287–212 BC) allegedly cried after discovering that he could immerse an object in a full tub of water and measure the spillage to determine the object’s volume. Aside from this story—and the legend that he then ran naked through his city’s streets to celebrate—many of us know little else about the man, which is why Eureka Man is such a valuable read.

As Alan Hirshfeld explains, Archimedes’ seemingly simple observation did more than prove to his monarch, King Hieron II of Syracuse (an independent Greek city-state on Sicily’s coast), that a certain amount of silver had been used in what was supposed to be his solid-gold crown. It also established the key principles of buoyancy that govern the flotation of hot-air balloons and ships.

Such far-reaching insights were par for the course in Archimedes’ work. Square roots and irrigation devices, planetariums and the stability of ships, polyhedra and pulleys: he wrote on all of these topics, as well as on number systems, levels, the value of pi and the size of the Universe. He also developed war machines—including variable-sized catapults and “Archimedes’ claw,” an iron-tipped crane that could lift a ship out of water—so fearsome that they held Roman troops at bay during their attack on Syracuse.

Hirshfeld does more than recount events taking place during Archimedes’ lifetime; he also shows how Archimedean treatises, rediscovered after a millennium of collective amnesia in Europe, helped guide thinkers out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. And he chronicles the amazing tale of the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest, a collection of six of Archimedes’ treatises (including On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies and Measurement of the Circle) that was originally copied in AD 900 and whose pages had been largely erased and reused, before being rediscovered and subject to exhaustive scientific analysis in modern times.

Give Eureka Man a place to stand on your bookshelf, and it will move you.

Hardcover: 288 pages

Publisher: Walker & Company ( September 01, 2009 )

Item #: 33-9642

ISBN: 9780802716187

Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.0 inches

Product Weight: 13.0 ounces