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Archimedes did a tremendous amount of ground-breaking work on levers and pulleys, enabling the Greeks to move heavier things than ever before. He once bragged “give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth”. He also invented the Archimedes screw, a device (consisting of a large screw inside a pipe) still used in irrigation today. Despite all this he considered his greatest accomplishment to be his book on the sphere and the cylinder. He even had a sphere and cylinder engraved on his tombstone when he died.  

Archimedes did a tremendous amount of ground-breaking work on levers and pulleys, enabling the Greeks to move heavier things than ever before. He once bragged “give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth”. He also invented the Archimedes screw, a device (consisting of a large screw inside a pipe) still used in irrigation today. Despite all this he considered his greatest accomplishment to be his book on the sphere and the cylinder. He even had a sphere and cylinder engraved on his tombstone when he died.  

Archimedes was killed in 212 B.C. when the Romans, under General Marcellus, captured Syracuse. His death was "a great loss to the ancient world.”

In 212 B.C., the Roman army under command of General Marcellus succeeded in invading Syracuse. Archimedes reportedly was absorbed in concentration, drawing figures in the dirt with a stick when a Roman soldier demanded he surrender.  Archimedes refused, saying his calculations were not yet complete and was slain on the spot.