And thus it ceases to be incredible that (as is commonly told of him) the charm of his familiar and domestic Siren made him forget his food and neglect his person, to that degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the truest sense, divine possession with his love and delight in science.
His discoveries were numerous and admirable; but he is said to have requested his friends and relations that, when he was dead, they would place over his tomb a sphere containing a cylinder, inscribing it with the ration which the containing solid bears to the contained.
tl;dr:
Archimedes likes science so much, that when people used force to get him to bathe or be anointed with oils, he would spend the entire experience drawing diagrams and doing match with whatever was nearby. He also asked that, when he died, they would build a scienc-ey thing on his tomb.
Source:
Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Marcellus." Plutarch's Lives. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 420. Print.
Further Reading:
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