Two beautiful minds...

Archimedes

Our journey begins in the 3rd century B.C. when Roman forces under Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a great and well-know Roman General, are about to besiege Syracuse. The ruler of the city asks for immediate help and Archimedes, a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer takes the responsibility for the protection of Syracuse. The battle seemed to be lost from the early beginning but Archimedes had not said his last word. He managed to construct great machines such as the "Claw of Archimedes", also known as "the ship shaker" that when it was dropped under the attacking ship the crane-like arm from which a large metal grappling hook was suspended, would swing upwards lifting the ship out of the water and possibly sinking it. Another important machine was his "heat-death ray" that could set fire to the enemy ships using the principles of the parabolic reflector in a manner similar to solar furnace. After two years of successful defence, the Roman forces finally managed to enter to Syracuse and a soldier killed Archimedes because he thought that the mathematical instruments the great Greek scientist was carrying were valuable. He was so immersed himself in his work that even during the last moments of his life he was studying a  a reference to the circles in the mathematical drawing and when the soldier disturbed him he said his last words: "Do not disturb my circles"..

Leonardo da Vinci

Now, imagine we could travel with a time machine, our next station is Renaissance and we visit the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He had great concepts in his mind as these of flying machines and many others but what is really worth-mentioning is that also Leonardo was valued as a refutable engineer. In letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for protection of a city or a siege. Specifically, when he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of a moveable barricades to protect the city fro attack.
They lived on different time periods but they have so many things in common. Both of them were beyond their time and protected cities with their inventions.However, their real weapons were not their machines but their brain, their thoughts and their ideas.Taking everything into account, they could undoubtedly be enlisted to the most beautiful minds of all time..



Sources:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci