[math-fun] Archimedes

Arab scholar Abu al Rayhan Muḥammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (973-1048) claimed in an old manuscript that "Heron's" (10-70 AD) formula for the area of a triangle, was actually discovered over 300 years before by Archimedes (287-212 BC). I got this from Howard Eves: Intro to history of mathematics, page 124. (No surviving Archimedes writings support this.) Eves ("great moments in mathematics") and apparently the London Times 19 October 1965, says that in 1965, a steam shovel excavating a hotel in Syracuse found a stone on which was engraved a sphere inscribed in a cylinder. This was presumably the long-lost tombstone of Archimedes.