Archimedes' life impacted many people of his time because his inventions brought a new level to ancient warfare. He was also known for being a mathematician and for his scientific writings, many of which survive to this day. Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and lived to be seventy-five years old. This places the date of his birth around 287 BC and the date of his death around 362 BC. His father was an astronomer and may have been related to Hieron II, king of Syracuse (“Archimedes”). We don't know much about his childhood, but we do know that he studied with Euclid in Alexandria, Egypt. After his studies, he returned to Syracuse and created numerous inventions that still influence us today (“Biography of Archimedes”). The discovery for which Archimedes is perhaps most famous is Archimedes' Principle. King Hiero II gave a goldsmith a certain amount of gold and asked him to make a crown from it. Once the crown was finished, the king suspected that the goldsmith had replaced some of the crown's gold with silver. Archimedes was asked to discover the truth without melting the crown to calculate its density (“Archimedes' Principle”). When he then took a bath, Archimedes saw the water flow over the edges of the tub. As he watched the water overflow, he suddenly found his answer. "Eureka!" he shouted, jumping out of the tub and running down the street without his clothes (qtd. in Gow 50). Archimedes to Hawking by Clifford A. Pickover explains it this way: “Because gold has a greater density than silver, a cube of gold would be smaller than a cube of silver of equal weight, causing less to escape water from the bucket." Archimedes could do with the crown the same thing he did in the bath to discover the density... in the center of the paper... revealing the true genius of the greatest scientist of antiquity. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. 2007. Print. “Archimede”. Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. November 2013. Web. November 19, 2013. “Biography of Archimedes.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. nd Web. November 19, 2013. Questions, Energy. “Did Archimedes' solar-powered death ray exist?”. Energy is important. 19 August 2010. Web. 18 November 2013. “Archimedes' Screw”. How things work. nd Web. 19 November 2013. "File: Conceptual Diagram of the Archimedes Screw." Wikimedia Commons. 24 October 2013. Web. 21 November 2013. “Archimedes' screw”. Thomasnet. 25 November 2013. Web. 20 November 2013. “Archimedes' screw”. Princeton University. nd Web. 19 November 2013. “Death of Archimedes”. Death of Archimedes. nd Web. 16 November 2013. “Archimedes”. Ancient Greece. nd Web. 16 November 2013.