Archimedes' Determination of Circular Area Summary and Analysis

Archimedes is born in Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the third century BC. He is not only one of the greatest early mathematicians, he is a prolific inventor and scientist. Contemporary accounts of Archimedes portray him as a stereotypical absent-minded genius, Dunham explains, neglecting his everyday responsibilities as he is lost in thought. Archimedes is traditionally described as meeting his death at the hands of a Roman invader after the fall of Syracuse when he refuses to accompany the soldier until he has finished working out a math problem.

Archimedes' great theorem chosen by Dunham regards the measurement of the area of a circle. That the diameter of a circle is always in the same proportion to its circumference is already known in Archimedes' times. While the Greeks did not use...