Mathematician · 287 BC – 212 BC

Archimedes

Little-Known Facts

He reputedly leapt from his bath shouting 'Eureka!' on discovering how to measure volume by displacement.
He was killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of Syracuse, supposedly while absorbed in a geometry problem.

Did Archimedes really burn ships with mirrors?

The 'heat ray' of focused mirrors is likely legend; experiments suggest it would have been impractical, though his other war engines were very real.