brownnsharp wrote:
....
Speaking of sharp... there was a show on TV about a month ago about a
lost and re-discovered book of mathematics written by Archimedes. It
seems that he had discovered the calculus about 200-300 BC. That
predates Newton by 1500 years or so. Loss of the book, it was claimed
"set mathematics back 1000 years"

I don't think "The Sandreckoner" (in which, AIUI, Archimedes gave
"the method of exhaustion, a technique that allows the exact
computation of areas and volumes using ideas that sound very
familiar to students of integral calculus") was lost. What was
lost was Archimedes' solution of the stomachion, and the first
major developments of *combinatorics* rather than *calculus*.
-jiw

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/20...19/stomachion/
http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgam..._11_17_03.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archimedes/palimpsest.html