Archimedes lived from 287 BC until he was killed by a Roman soldier in 212 BC. He is usually considered to be one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time, the other two being Newton and Gauss. The extant works of Archimedes are readily available today in Heath [2] and Dijksterhuis [3]. Both contain the works with extensive notes and historical information. They both can be somewhat difficult to plow through at times. To ease the burden, a new book by Sherman Stein [3] came out last year that is accessible to a much broader audience. It fact the only prerequisite is high school algebra and geometry. A partial listing of the works that have not been lost is as follows : On the Equilibrium of Planes, Quadrature of the Parabola, On the Sphere and Cylinder, On Spirals, On Conoids and Spheroids, On Floating Bodies, Measurement of a Circle, The Sand-reckoner, and The Book of Lemmas.

---