The extraordinary genius of Archimedes—scientist, mathematician, engineer, and showman.

Many of us know little more about Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) than that he famously leaped from his bathtub and exclaimed "Eureka!" upon discovering that the spillage of water produced by an immersed object reveals the object’s volume. That simple insight speaks to his influence over millennia, for it helped establish the key principles of buoyancy that govern the flotation of everything from boats to balloons.

Archimedes also had a profound impact on the development of mathematics and science, the value of pi to the size of the universe. Archimedes’ reputation during his lifetime swelled to mythic proportions for his feats of engineering, among them the hand-cranked irrigation device—commonly known as the "Archimedes’ screw"—and his ingenious use of levers, pulleys, and ropes to launch, single-handedly, a fully laden ship. Indeed, he is said to have boasted to the Syracusan King Hieron II, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth." Later in his life, he applied his keen intellect to military matters, developing fearsome machines of war and defense strategies that successfully held at bay the Roman army, the greatest of all antiquity, when it attacked his home city of Syracuse in 213 B.C.

Eureka Man brings to life the genius and humanity of Archimedes and the drama and complexity of his ancient world, when both civilization and the exploration of nature were at formative stages. Alan Hirshfeld also brings Archimedes alive in our own lifetime by chronicling the remarkable saga of the Archimedes Palimpsest—the long-lost manuscript rediscovered in the twentieth century that reveals much about Archimedes’ thought process and about how his manifold achievements were recorded and spread. Speaking to us across the centuries, it is a vivid reminder that Archimedes’ cumulative record of accomplishment places him among the exalted ranks of Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein.