Archimedes - 287 B.C - 212 B.C
Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. He lived in the city of Syracuse, in a time where mathematics and physics were not very popular. His inventions and ideas serve as a benchmark for the advancements of technology today. He was known for building a foundation in hydro-statics, statics, and he was able to explain the principle of the lever. Many of his inventions and discoveries were used to protect the city of Syracuse. For example, it is said that Archimedes used mirrors as a weapon that produced fire. He discovered that with the use of mirrors, he could reflect and bend the rays of light coming from the sun. He was able to focus the rays of light on enemy ships attacking the city of Syracuse and burn them down. The most common story about Archimedes is that he discovered a way to determine the volume of an object that has an irregular shape. When he was asked by the King to find out if his crown had been made out of pure gold or if silver was mixed in, Archimedes began searching for a way to find the volume of the crown without melting it down. One day, when he sat down into his bath, he noticed that the water rose. This brought him to the conclusion that when an object is placed in water, the amount of water that is displaced is equal to the volume of the object. This is when the common phrase "Eureka!" was started, as Archimedes ran down the streets yelling "Eureka!" in excitement. He was able to prove that the goldsmith had put silver into the crown by using his newly discovered principle. It is said that this story may not being completely true. It is more likely that Archimedes used another one of his mathematical discoveries to determine the volume of the crown. This principle was that an object immersed in a liquid will experience a buoyant force equal to the weight of the liquid it displaces. Archimedes would have been able to compare the density of the "golden" crown to the density of solid gold by balancing the crown on one end of a scale, with a pure gold reference on the other end and than placing it in water. The difference in the density of the two objects would cause the scale to tip. Archimedes also discovered that a sphere has 2/3 of the volume of a cylinder with the same height and diameter. This was Archimedes' favourite mathematical discovery, so when he was killed, his grave had a sculpture on it of a sphere and cylinder of the same diameter and height.
Bill Gates - 1955 - Present
Bill gates is an American investor, programmer, inventor, philanthropist, and business magnate from Seattle, Washington. Gates plays a large role in the world's largest personal-computer company in the world, Microsoft. He is Microsoft's former chief executive and current chairman. When Gates was 13 years old, he took an interest in programming the General Electric computer system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. This is the machine he used to write his first computer program. His first computer program was a tic-tac-toe game where users could play against the computer. Gates later went on to write a payroll program in Cool for Information Sciences, Inc. When they realized how talented Gates was, they had him write his school's computer program which was used to make the students' course schedules. With power like this, Gates was able to use the program to his benefit, by modifying the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly girls. When Gates was 17, he and his friend Paul Allen formed a venture called Traf-O-Data, which was used to make traffic counters. By 1973, at a young age of 18, Gates served as a congressional page in the US House of Representatives. When he graduated highschool, he scored 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT. He then went to post-secondary school at Harvard College. While at Harvard, Gates created an algorithm for pancake sorting to solve one of the unsolved problems in his combinatorics class. His solution was the fastest one for over thirty years. After one year of college, Gates dropped out of school because he wanted to start his own company. This is when he and his friend Paul Allen began working for MITS, and called their partnership Micro-Soft. They went on to create a Microsoft BASIC program, which was popular. Since then, he has improved his computer programs to the Microsoft Windows series, Microsoft has created multiple generations of Xboxs, cell phones, etc. Now, Bill Gates is one of the most wealthy people in the world.
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