Did Archimedes spend time in Alexandria, Egypt?
Upvote:1
There is compelling circumstantial evidence that Archimedes studied in Alexandria as a young man, but I believe he was back in Syracuse in 265. He would have then been about 22. At that time, Hieron 11 became king of Syracuse and would have commissioned the famous golden crown and asked Archimedes to verify its gold content.
In 240, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth and a critical part of his geometry was the distance between Alexandria and Syene. He may have used bematists, contemporary Egyptian records and a hodometer to check the land distance, then estimate the direct distance.
Coincidentally in 240, Hieron's lavish grain/passenger ship designed by Archimedes, The Alexandrian, berthed in Alexandria. Archimedes may have been a passenger, bringing with him his land distance measurer, the hodometer. It may be that Eratosthenes used this device invented by his colleague, Archimedes.
Upvote:12
It is possible, although there is no direct evidence to confirm it. We have no surviving documents that state explicitly that Archimedes studied in Alexandria.
We know that Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries in Alexandria. On a couple of occasions, Archimedes referred to Conon of Samos as his friend. In addition, two of his works (The Method of Mechanical Theorems and the Cattle Problem) have introductions addressed to Eratosthenes of Cyrene.
Among many others, Thomas G. Chondros has argued that this implies the Archimedes studied in Alexandria [Archimedes life works and machines, Elsevier, 2010].
However, it is also quite possible that both Conon and Eratosthenes travelled to Syracuse and met Archimedes there.
More post
- π What happened to the burial sites of Edward I's children?
- π What evidence supports the claim that Shivaji's father was Muslim?
- π Why did the Protestants in Ireland in the 1800s not want Home Rule?
- π Can you please help identify this military uniform (1700's)?
- π Purple in Roman History
- π Haredi (Orthodox Jewish) view on Zionism pre-1948
- π Why did hobos (at least stereotypically) carry their belongings in a cloth on a stick on their shoulder?
- π Are there any examples of localized micro-conflicts in Mexican history?
- π What are the best resources for studying oracle bone inscriptions?
- π What's the difference between Potur and Εalvar?
- π How many customs houses were there in 1850 California?
- π What type of defenses did the Pequot use at their fort?
- π Why did the baths of Bath need a hypocaust?
- π Was the enclosure responsible for the supply of factory workers in 18th and 19th Century England?
- π How accurate was rocket artillery in the 18th and 19th centuries?
- π What is the significance behind "40 days" that often appears in the Bible?
- π Is there a historical reason for a pattern of worse technological standards beating out better ones?
- π Did germophobia exist in classical antiquity?
- π Why did Gandhi give the violent "Do or Die" slogan to the Quit India movement?
- π How did warriors age historically?
- π Did Leon Trotsky get stopped by authorities in Halifax?
- π Alternatives to a Two State Solution
- π Did Napoleon plan to invade India?
- π Does the rule of tincture apply within a variation of the field?
- π What do I ask myself/ teach my child to ask herself when looking for translations/adaptations of historical/epic works for her?
- π Which Babylonian tablets contains the list of squares and cubes?
- π Have any historical pandemics actually originated in the United States?
- π At the end of WWII, were Nazis working on any other super weapon besides V-2?
- π Did churches in American south have to be segregated by law?
- π Who are the three men standing and what are they holding at this University of Paris Doctors' Meeting?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- π Did Archimedes spend time in Alexandria, Egypt?
- π Where did Cimon spend his time while in exile?
- π At which point in time did the majority of German population become aware of the Holocaust?
- π How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?
- π Why did the Japanese attack the Aleutians at the same time as Midway?
- π How did the Druids learn the Greek language by the time of Caesar's campaign in Gaul?
- π Italian History from 1870-1913: Why did Italy have such a hard time becoming a "Great Power" like Germany?
- π Where did Roman senators mostly live in the time of Tiberius or Caligula?
- π Did the German authorities respell Polish personal names to be more German during the time of the German Empire?
- π What did the sympathies lie of the US Navy around the time of the American Civil War?
- π Did anyone at the time blame the Great Plague on rats or fleas?
- π How did Egypt become a protectorate of the British empire?
- π Did the Russian Empire have a claim to Sweden? Was there ever a time where they could have pursued it?
- π How much time did people have to take shelter during the Blitz in 1940-41?
- π Did the Ottoman Empire lose some control over Egypt during the Crimean War?
- π Did Archimedes have any students?
- π What time period did these notes come from?
- π Around 1640s, at what time did people eat Christmas dinner?
- π How well did William III speak English at time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688?
- π Why did the Arab League re-admit Egypt in 1989?
- π Did Viet Nam suffer a famine any time during the 1980s? And if not, how close was it to famine?
- π Why did Egypt forbid entry of Israeli ships into the Suez canal in 1956?
- π Did ancient Egypt gain any significant cultural influence from other states/regions?
- π What resources did the Nahua value most at the time of Spanish conquest?
- π Did either Chinese government (Beijing or Taipei) operate an administrative structure in the Kowloon Walled City at any time between 1898 and 1994?
- π Why did Dorothy Dixers become prevalent in question time in Australia?
- π At what point in time did Judaism become popular? [Pre Christianity]
- π Why did the United States under the Articles of Confederation have a hard time getting funding?
- π Did the famous abolitionist Elihu Embree own slaves at the time of his death?
- π How much did Shah Jahan spend on Taj Mahal?