Archimedes was born in Siracusa in the third century B.C. and is considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time. Stomachion is a puzzle found in Archimedes’ famous “Codex C” in which 14 pieces can form a square in 536 different combinations.
According to many scholars, the study of this puzzle allowed Archimedes to take an interest in combinatorial calculus, a branch of Mathematics that would only develop 2000 years later!
A treasure from the past to play with today at any age.
All the pieces have been cut with a laser to ensure optimum precision and a perfect fit.
You can also make funny shapes of animals, people and objects letting your imagination run away with you.
It was only thanks to the recent use of computers in 2003 that it was possible to calculate that you can make 536 different squares with the Stomachion pieces.
It was only thanks to the recent use of computers in 2003 that it was possible to calculate that you can make 536 different squares with the Stomachion pieces.
Archimedes lived in Syracuse in the 3rd century BC and is considered one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history.
He wrote several treatises, the contents of which have come down to us thanks to hand copies made by monks in the Middle Ages, as with many other texts from antiquity.
The treatise in which the Stomachion is contained is the third of these, known as the Codex C. It was located in a library in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) when, in 1204, the city was sacked and set on fire by the Crusaders.
Codex C was saved but the parchment was reused several times to write other texts on it.
It was found in Constantinople in 1906 by Professor Johan Ludwig Heiberg, an expert on Archimedes' work.
After the First World War, Codex C was stolen and taken to France, where it underwent several tamperings in an attempt to be sold. Years later it was bought by a Parisian businessman.
In 1998, his daughter decided to sell it at auction at Christie's in New York, where it was sold to an anonymous patron for $2.2 million. Its condition was terrible, and it was so badly damaged that it was illegible.
After more than 20 years of work, four of which were spent restoring the pages, and the study of a team of dozens of experts from every discipline, Codex C has revealed its extraordinary content and opened up new knowledge about Archimedes' genius.
In particular, the use of computers has made it possible to calculate that the 14 tesserae of the Stomachion can form a square in 536 different combinations, leading to the realisation that Archimedes was the first, through it, to take an interest in combinatorial calculus, a branch of mathematics that would develop 2000 years later.
