Archimedes was born about 26 BC in the port city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, then in the greater Greek colony. Archimedes died at the age of seventy-five, according to the Byzantine Greek historian John Jetjes, from which the year of his birth is inferred. In a document called The Sand Reconnaissance, Archimedes mentions his father's name as Phidias. Phidias was an astronomer about whom nothing more could be known. The historian Plutarch, in his biographical book The Parallel Lives, mentions Archimedes as a relative of King Hiero II of Syracuse. Heraclidis, a friend of Archimedes, wrote a biography of him, but it was later lost. Many details of Archimedes' life are no longer known. For example, whether he was married or had children is still unknown. In his youth Archimedes probably studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Siren were his classmates. He referred to Connon of Samos as his friend; On the other hand, at the beginning of his two works (The Method of Mechanical Theorems and The Cattle Problem) there were some instructions for Eratosthenes.
Archimedes was killed during the Second Punic War in 212 BC, when the Roman general General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse after a two-year siege. According to Plutarch's account, Archimedes was busy with a mathematical figure at the time of the fall of Syracuse. A Roman soldier stopped him and ordered him to visit General Marcellus. When Archimedes refuses to finish his work, the enraged soldier immediately kills him with his sword. Another less common idea is that Archimedes was killed while surrendering to a Roman soldier. According to this doctrine, he was carrying some mathematical tools which the soldier misled into thinking he was a valuable asset and killed him out of greed. It is said that General Marcellus was aware of Archimedes' scientific genius and instructed him not to harm him. The news of Archimedes' death angered him.