In logic, reductio ad absurdum, also known as argumentum ad absurdum or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
Reductio ad absurdum, painting by John Pettie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884
Archimedes of Syracuse was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.
Archimedes Thoughtful by Domenico Fetti (1620)
Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes (1805) by Benjamin West
Front page of Archimedes' Opera, in Greek and Latin, edited by David Rivault (1615)
Ostomachion is a dissection puzzle found in the Archimedes Palimpsest.