Excerpt:
Archimedes was born in the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily in 287 BC. He was the son of an astronomer and mathematician named Phidias. Aside from that, very little is known about the early life of Archimedes or his family. Some maintain that he belonged to the nobility of Syracuse, and that his family was in some way related to that of Hiero II, King of Syracuse.
Annotation:
This site is a companion piece to an Archimedes exhibit at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. The Gallery exhibit is centered around The Archimedes Palimpsest, a rare and ancient document that contains a compendium of the Greek mathematicians's work, the only copy of his essay, Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the only source for the treatise, On Floating Bodies, in the original Greek. The site contains a nice timeline and biography of Archimedes' life, an explanation of the historical significance of the Palimpsest, and a history of the discovery and conservation of the piece. The site is professionally designed, informative, and easy to navigate. The site may serve as a resource for historians interested in rare manuscripts and their preservation.