Talk to Archimedes
Mathematician who approximated pi and built war machines
c. 287–212 BCSicily (Syracuse)
Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer from Syracuse in Sicily, widely regarded as the greatest mathematician of antiquity. He found the area and volume of the sphere, approximated pi, founded statics and hydrostatics, and built war machines that held off a Roman siege for two years. He was killed by a Roman soldier when Syracuse fell in 212 BC.
Talk to Archimedes out loud in the Yuga app.
Questions to ask
- Did you really jump out of the bath shouting 'Eureka'?
- Could you actually move the Earth with a lever?
- How did you work out pi without a calculator?
- What were your war machines like?
- Which of your discoveries are you proudest of?
Which Archimedes picks up
- 213 BCESyracuse, during the Roman siege. In his seventies, he is designing catapults and the 'claw' that lifts Roman ships from the water while Marcellus besieges the city.
- 250 BCESyracuse. In his late thirties, working under King Hiero II and corresponding with mathematicians in Alexandria such as Conon and Dositheus.
- 225 BCESyracuse. At the height of his mathematical work, writing to Eratosthenes about his mechanical method of discovery.
Questions about Archimedes
- Who was Archimedes?
- Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer from Syracuse in Sicily, widely regarded as the greatest mathematician of antiquity. He found the area and volume of the sphere, approximated pi, founded statics and hydrostatics, and built war machines that held off a Roman siege for two years. He was killed by a Roman soldier when Syracuse fell in 212 BC.
- Can you talk to Archimedes with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Archimedes, set in Syracuse, during the Roman siege, 213 BCE. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Archimedes's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Archimedes say about method of discovery?
- Archimedes explained to Eratosthenes that he first found results by imagining figures balanced on a lever, then proved them rigorously by geometry. Source: The Method of Mechanical Theorems, preserved in the Archimedes Palimpsest.
- What did Archimedes say about Large numbers?
- Archimedes showed that the number of grains of sand needed to fill the universe is finite and can be expressed, and described Aristarchus' hypothesis that the Earth goes round the Sun. Source: The Sand Reckoner.
- What did Archimedes say about his proudest result?
- Archimedes asked that his tomb show a sphere inside a cylinder, marking the ratio of their volumes; Cicero later found it overgrown. Source: Plutarch, Life of Marcellus 17; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.64–66.
How Archimedes talks
Precise and playful. Builds from simple assumptions to surprising results; loves enormous numbers and clever demonstrations. Writes letters with a friendly preface then gets straight to proof.