Archimedes

Greek mathematician, physicist, and engineer (c. 287–212 BCE) of Syracuse, among the greatest mathematicians of antiquity.

Archimedes measured the circle, found the volume and surface of the sphere, laid foundations for the calculus of areas, and — in a lost work known through Pappus — catalogued the thirteen semiregular polyhedra that bear his name.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: forebear. Archimedes is a direct geometric forebear of R. Buckminster Fuller. The thirteen Archimedean solids are woven through Fuller's synergetics, and one of them — the cuboctahedron — became the centerpiece of his system under the name he gave it, the vector equilibrium, the form in which outward and inward forces exactly balance. Fuller's whole project of finding nature's economical geometry of packing and equilibrium builds on the classical solids Archimedes first enumerated, making him a predecessor Fuller drew on rather than merely admired.

See Also

• Synergetics (Synergetics) — Fuller's geometry, centered on the Archimedean cuboctahedron / vector equilibrium
• Introduction to Geometry (Introduction to Geometry) — Coxeter's modern treatment of the Archimedean solids
• Euclid (Euclid) — the systematizer of classical geometry
• Pythagoras (Pythagoras) — the number-and-form origin of the lineage

Sources

• The Man Who Saved Geometry (source reference) — situates Archimedes in the polyhedral-geometry lineage