Many of us know little about Archimedes beyond his "Eureka" exclamation upon discovering that he could immerse an object in a full tub of water and measure the spillage to determine the object's volume. That simple observation helped establish the key principles of buoyancy and flotation. But Archimedes had a profound impact on the development of mathematics and science: from square roots to the stability of ships; number systems to levers; the value of pi to the size of the universe. Yet this same cerebral man developed machines of war that held at bay the greatest army of antiquity. Archimedes' reputation reached mythic proportions in the ancient world, and his rediscovered treatises helped guide thinkers into the Renaissance. Indeed, his cumulative achievement places him among the exalted ranks of Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, and this book brings his genius to life for general readers.--From publisher description.