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Archimedes: Fulcrum of Science (Great Lives of the Ancient World)

Archimedes: Fulcrum of Science (Great Lives of the Ancient World)

Current price: $22.50
Publication Date: October 8th, 2024
Publisher:
Reaktion Books
ISBN:
9781789149227
Pages:
240
Available for Preorder

Description

A bold reimagining of the Greek mathematician’s singular life as a truly modern scientist.
 
Galileo, Leonardo, Newton, and Tesla revered him: Archimedes of Syracuse—an engineer who single-handedly defied the world’s most powerful army and a mathematician who knew more in 212 BCE than all of Europe would know for the next seventeen centuries. In this bold reimagining, modern polymath Nicholas Nicastro shines a new light on Archimedes’ life and work. Far from the aloof, physically inept figure of historical myth, Archimedes is revealed to be an ambitious, combative, and fiercely competitive man. A genius who challenged an empire, Archimedes emerges in this book as the world’s first fully modern scientist—millennia before his intellectual descendants transformed our world.

About the Author

Nicholas Nicastro is a novelist and science writer with articles in the New York Times, New York Observer, and others. His books include Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe.

Praise for Archimedes: Fulcrum of Science (Great Lives of the Ancient World)

“An engaging account of the life and legacy of Archimedes of Syracuse. . . . Nicastro presents Archimedes’s ideas and achievements with admirable clarity.”
— Liba Taub, director and curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge