Archimedes was one of the greatest (perhaps the greatest) mathematicians of all time. Among engineers, he was one of the most brilliant designers and builders of all time. And historians of science have placed him among the greatest scientists of all time.

Archimedes lived in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the third century BC, up to the time it was conquered by the Romans—a conquest that led to his death. Colonized in the eighth century BC by Greeks from Corinth, Syracuse was the most important city in Magna Graecia with a population of 300,000 when Archimedes lived there. Cicero once described Syracuse as “… the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all”.

Today several important structures of ancient Syracuse survive. These include the Greek Theatre, a largely rock-cut structure created during Archimedes’ lifetime, where ancient Greek plays continue to be presented each May and June … the Castello Euryalos, a massive four-level fortress with immense walls and moats which Archimedes helped fortify and where he tested and perfected his military machines … and the Duomo, a magnificent fifth century BC Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena that has morphed into a baroque Christian cathedral; the original Doric columns can still be seen protruding from the side walls of the cathedral.

This World Conference, THE GENIUS OF ARCHIMEDES, will take place 7 to 9 June 2010 in Syracuse. Mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and other scientists as well as historians of science are invited to present original research papers demonstrating Archimedes’ enduring influence. The Conference will be conducted exclusively in English. More than 200 individuals, including science writers and the scientific press, are expected to attend.

The Conference will be held on the small island of Ortygia, the nucleus of the ancient city of Syracuse. To walk today in the streets of Ortygia is to walk in the footsteps of Archimedes. Come to Syracuse 7 to 9 June 2010 as we celebrate the amazing life and continuing influence of Archimedes.



The genius of Archimedes …

Archimedes was a natural philosopher who, like Aristotle before him, objectively studied the laws of nature and the physical universe. His name is attached to two of the most fundamental laws of nature—The Law of the Lever and The Law of Buoyancy. As important as Archimedes’ discovery of these laws, however, was his attempt to show that these laws follow from simple, self-evident principles. Archimedes sought to apply an axiomatic, deductive approach to physical phenomena, to the world around him—the cosmos—just as Euclid had done earlier to the man-made world of geometry.
During his lifetime Archimedes produced nine major bodies of work:

On the Equilibriums of Planes I, II
Quadrature of the Parabola
On the Sphere and Cylinder I, II
On Spirals
On Conoids and Spheroids
On Floating Bodies I, II
Measurement of a Circle
The Sand Reckoner
The Method of Mechanical Problems