Archimedes / by Sir Thomas Heath.

  • Thomas Little Heath
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Archimedes / by Sir Thomas Heath. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/70 page 27
    Archimedes is further credited with the authorship of the famous Cattle-Problem enunciated in a Greek epi¬ gram edited by Lessing in 1773. According to its heading the problem was communicated by Archimedes to the mathematicians at Alexandria in a letter to Eratosthenes; and a scholium to Plato’s Charmides speaks of the problem “ called by Archimedes the Cattle- Problem It is an extraordinarily difficult problem in indeterminate analysis, the solution of which involves enormous figures. Of lost works of Archimedes the following can be identified :— 1. Investigations relating to polyhedra are referred to by Pappus, who, after speaking of the five regular solids, gives a description of thirteen other polyhedra discovered by Archimedes which are semi-regular, being contained by polygons equilateral and equiangular but not similar. One at least of these semi-regular solids was, however, already known to Plato. 2. A book of arithmetical content entitled Principles dealt, as we learn from Archimedes himself, with the naming of numbers, and expounded a system of express¬ ing large numbers which could not be written in the ordinary Greek notation. In setting out the same system in the Sandreckoner (see Chapter V. below), Archimedes explains that he does so for the benefit of those who had not seen the earlier work. 3. On Balances (or perhaps levers'). Pappus says that in this work Archimedes proved that “greater circles overpower lesser circles when they rotate about the same centre 4. A book On Centres of Gravity is alluded to by Sim¬ plicius. It is not, however, certain that this and the last-mentioned work were separate treatises. Possibly Book I. On Plane Equilibriums may have been part of a larger work (called perhaps Elements of Mechanics), and On Balances may have been an alternative title. The
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3