BSED Mathematics – 1

Date: September 13, 2022

Written Report

Hellenistic Mathematics
– Archimedes
Hellenistic Mathematics
– Diophantus

Submitted by:
Janna Rosheil Aso Briones

Submitted to:
Sir Milani Udal
OBJECTIVES
At the end of the report, the student will able to:
1. Understand the topic.
2. Know the contributions of Hellenistic Mathematics:
 Archimedes
 Diophantus
3. Appreciate the works and discoveries of Hellenistic Mathematics.

INTRODUCTION
Archimedes is regarded as one of the most notable Greek
mathematicians. He is known as the Father of Mathematics. In this article, we
will be dealing with a small introduction to the great mathematicians’ lives of
all time. The significant discoveries, concepts in mathematical science are the
contributions of the father of mathematics. Any student who is enthusiastic
about learning the techniques of mathematical problems would have ever
wondered about who is the creator of mathematics. Archimedes is yet another
great talent from the land of the Greek. He thrived for gaining knowledge in
mathematical education and made various contributions. He is best known for
antiquity and the invention of compound pulleys and screw pump. While
Diophantus was a Hellenistic Greek mathematician and was best known as the
father of algebra and attributed to a series of books. His equations can be
defined as polynomial equations in several unknowns. The compilations of his
books were called Arithmetica.

ARCHIMEDES OF
SYRACUSE – Eureka & The
Principle
Another Greek mathematician who studied at
Alexandria in the 3rd Century BCE was Archimedes,
although he was born, died and lived most of his life
in Syracuse, Sicily (a Hellenic Greek colony in

Archimedes (c.287-212
BCE)
Magna Graecia). Little is known for sure of his life, and many of the stories and
anecdotes about him were written long after his death by the historians of ancient
Rome.

Also an engineer, inventor and astronomer, Archimedes was best known throughout
most of history for his military innovations like his siege engines and mirrors to
harness and focus the power of the sun, as well as levers, pulleys and pumps
(including the famous screw pump known as Archimedes’ Screw, which is still used
today in some parts of the world for irrigation).

But his true love was pure mathematics, and the discovery in 1906 of previously
unknown works, referred to as the “Archimedes Palimpsest”, has provided new
insights into how he obtained his mathematical results. Today, Archimedes is widely
considered to have been one of the greatest mathematicians of antiquity, if not of all
time, in the august company of mathematicians such as Newton and Gauss.

Method of Exhaustion
Archimedes produced
formulas to calculate the
areas of regular shapes,
using a revolutionary
method of capturing
new shapes by using
shapes he already
Approximation of the area of circle by Archimedes’
understood. For
method of exhaustion
example, to estimate
the area of a circle, he constructed a larger polygon outside the circle and a smaller
one inside it. He first enclosed the circle in a triangle, then in a square, pentagon,
hexagon, etc, each time approximating the area of the circle more closely. By this
so-called “method of exhaustion” (or simply “Archimedes’ Method”), he effectively
homed in on a value for one of the most important numbers in all of mathematics, π.
His estimate was between 31⁄7 (approximately 3.1429) and 310⁄71 (approximately
3.1408), which compares well with its actual value of approximately 3.1416.
Interestingly, Archimedes seemed quite aware that a range was all that could be
established and that the actual value might never be known. His method for
estimating π was taken to the extreme by Ludoph van Ceulen in the 16th Century,
who used a polygon with an extraordinary 4,611,686,018,427,387,904 sides to arrive
at a value of π correct to 35 digits. We now know that π is in fact an irrational number,
whose value can never be known with complete accuracy.

Similarly, he calculated the approximate volume of a solid like a sphere by slicing it

up into a series of cylinders, and adding up the volumes of the constituent cylinders.
He saw that by making the slices ever thinner, his approximation became more and
more exact, so that, in the limit, his approximation became an exact calculation. This
use of infinitesimals, in a way similar to modern integral calculus, allowed him to give
answers to problems to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, while specifying the limits
within which the answer
lay.

Quadrature of
the Parabola
Archimedes’ most
sophisticated use of the
method of exhaustion,
which remained
unsurpassed until the
development of integral Archimedes’ quadrature of the parabola using his
calculus in the 17th method of exhaustion
Century, was his proof –
known as the Quadrature of the Parabola – that the area of a parabolic segment
is 4⁄3 that of a certain inscribed triangle. He dissected the area of a parabolic segment
(the region enclosed by a parabola and a line) into infinitely many triangles whose
areas form a geometric progression. He then computed the sum of the resulting
geometric series, and proved that this is the area of the parabolic segment.

In fact, Archimedes had perhaps the most prescient view of the concept of infinity of
all the Greek mathematicians. Generally speaking, the Greeks’ preference for
precise, rigorous proofs and their distrust of paradoxes meant that they completely
avoided the concept of actual infinity. Even Euclid, in his proof of the infinitude of
prime numbers, was careful to conclude that there are “more primes than any given
finite number” i.e. a kind of “potential infinity” rather than the “actual infinity” of, for
example, the number of points on a line. Archimedes, however, in the “Archimedes
Palimpsest”, went further than any other Greek mathematician when, on compared
two infinitely large sets, he noted that they had an equal number of members, thus
for the first time considering actual infinity, a concept not seriously considered again
until Georg Cantor in the 19th Century.

Another example of the meticulousness and precision of Archimedes’ work is his

calculation of the value
of the square root of 3
as lying
between 265⁄153 (approxi
mately 1.7320261)
and 1351⁄780 (approximatel
y 1.7320512) – the
actual value is
approximately
1.7320508. He even
calculated the number
of grains of sand
required to fill the
universe, using a
system of counting
based on the myriad
(10,000) and myriad of
myriads (100 million). Archimedes showed that the volume and surface
His estimate was 8 area of a sphere are two-thirds that of its
63
vigintillion, or 8 x 10 . circumscribing cylinder

The discovery of which Archimedes claimed to be most proud was that of the
relationship between a sphere and a circumscribing cylinder of the same height and
diameter. He calculated the volume of a sphere as 4⁄3πr3, and that of a cylinder of the
same height and diameter as 2πr3. The surface area was 4πr2 for the sphere, and
6πr2 for the cylinder (including its two bases). Therefore, it turns out that the sphere
has a volume equal to two-thirds that of the cylinder, and a surface area also equal
to two-thirds that of the cylinder. Archimedes was so pleased with this result that a
sculpted sphere and cylinder were supposed to have been placed on his tomb of at
his request.

The Archimedes Principle

Despite his important contributions to pure mathematics, though, Archimedes is
probably best remembered for the anecdotal story of his discovery of a method for
determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape.

Eureka! Eureka!

King Hieron of
Syracuse had asked
Archimedes to find out if
the royal goldsmith had
cheated him by putting
silver in his new gold
crown, but Archimedes
clearly could not melt it
down in order to
measure it and establish
its density, so he was
forced to search for an
alternative solution.

While taking his bath on

day, he noticed that that
the level of the water in An experiment to demonstrate Archimedes’ Principle
the tub rose as he got in, and he had the sudden inspiration that he could use this
effect to determine the volume (and therefore the density) of the crown. In his
excitement, he apparently rushed out of the bath and ran naked through the streets
shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” (“I found it! I found it!”). This gave rise to what has
become known as Archimedes’ Principle: an object is immersed in a fluid is buoyed
up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.

Give me a place to stand on and I will move the

Earth
Another well-known quotation attributed to Archimedes is: “Give me a place to
stand on and I will move the Earth”, meaning that, if he had a fulcrum and a lever
long enough, he could move the Earth by his own effort, and his work on centres of
gravity was very important for future developments in mechanics.

According to legend, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier after the capture

of the city of Syracuse. He was contemplating a mathematical diagram in the sand
and enraged the soldier by refusing to go to meet the Roman general until he had
finished working on the problem. His last words are supposed to have been “Do not
disturb my circles!”

DIOPHANTUS OF
ALEXANDRIA
Diophantus was a Hellenistic Greek (or possibly
Egyptian, Jewish or even
Chaldean) mathematician who lived in Alexandria
during the 3rd Century CE. He is sometimes called
“the father of algebra”, and wrote an influential #e8a74f
series of books called the “Arithmetica”, a collection Diophantus of Alexandria
(c.200-284 CE)
of algebraic problems which greatly influenced the #e8a74f
subsequent development of number theory.
He also made important advances in mathematical notation, and was one of the first
mathematicians to introduce symbolism into algebra, using an abridged notation for
frequently occurring operations, and an abbreviation for the unknown and for the
powers of the unknown. He was perhaps the first to recognize fractions as numbers
in their own right, allowing positive rational numbers for the coefficients and solutions
of his equations.

Diophantus applied himself to some quite complex algebraic problems, particularly

what has since become
known as Diophantine
Analysis, which deals
with finding integer
solutions to kinds of
problems that lead to
equations in several
unknowns.

Diophantine
equations
Diophantine equations
can be defined as
polynomial equations
with integer coefficients
to which only integer
solutions are sought.
#e8a74f
Diophantine equations
For example, he would #e8a74f
explore problems such
as: two integers such
that the sum of their squares is a square (x2 + y2 = z2, examples being x = 3 and y = 4
giving z = 5, or x = 5 and y =12 giving z = 13); or two integers such that the sum of
their cubes is a square (x3 + y3 = z2, a trivial example being x = 1 and y = 2, giving z =
3); or three integers such that their squares are in arithmetic progression (x2 + z2 =
2y2, an example being x = 1, z = 7 and y = 5). His general approach was to determine
if a problem has infinitely many, or a finite number of solutions, or none at all.

Diophantus’ major work (and the most prominent work on algebra in all Greek
mathematics) was his “Arithmetica”, a collection of problems giving numerical
solutions of both determinate and indeterminate equations. Of the original thirteen
books of the “Arithmetica”, only six have survived, although some Diophantine
problems from “Arithmetica” have also been found in later Arabic sources. His
problems exercised the minds of many of the world’s best mathematicians for much
of the next two millennia, with some particularly celebrated solutions provided
by Brahmagupta, Pierre de Fermat, Joseph Louis Lagrange and Leonhard Euler,
among others. In recognition of their depth, David Hilbert proposed the solvability of
all Diophantine problems as the tenth of his celebrated problems in 1900, a definitive
solution to which only emerged with the work of Robinson and Matiyasevich in the
mid-20th Century.

Epitaph
One of the problems in a later 5th Century Greek anthology of number games is
sometimes considered to be Diophantus’ epitaph:

“Here lies Diophantus.

God gave him his boyhood one-sixth of his life;
One twelfth more as youth while whiskers grew rife;
And then yet one-seventh ‘ere marriage begun.
In five years there came a bouncing new son;
Alas, the dear child of master and sage,
After attaining half the measure of his father’s life, chill fate took him.
After consoling his fate by the science of numbers for four years, he ended his life.”

The puzzle implies that Diophantus lived to be about 84 years old (although its
biographical accuracy is uncertain).

CONCLUSION:
 I conclude that the works and discoveries of the Hellenistic mathematics;
Archimedes and Diophantus are important to the history of mathematics. They
have inspired countless generation of mathematicians to broaden their
intellectual skills in understanding the universe through mathematics. even non
mathematician have been inspired and thinking.

References:

https://www.storyofmathematics.com/hellenistic_archimedes.html/

https://www.storyofmathematics.com/hellenistic_diophantus.html/