Eureka (word)

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For other uses, see Eureka (disambiguation).

"Eureka" /jʊˈrkə/ is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is a transliteration of a word attributed to Archimedes.




The initial /h/ is dropped in some European languages, including Spanish, Dutch, and English, but preserved in others, such as Finnish, Danish, and German.





This story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius's books of architecture, two centuries after it supposedly took place.[4] Some scholars have doubted the accuracy of this tale, saying among other things that the method would have required precise measurements that would have been difficult to make at the time.[5] Galileo Galilei himself weighed in on the controversy, suggesting a design for a hydrostatic balance that could be used to compare the dry weight of an object with the weight of the same object submerged in water.[6] For the problem posed to Archimedes, though, there is a simple method which requires no precision equipment: balance the crown against pure gold in air, and then submerge the scale with crown and gold in water to see if they still balance.[7]

Names and mottos[edit]


The Seal of California, featuring the word "Eureka" above the head of Minerva


The city of Eureka, California, founded in 1850, uses the California State Seal as its official seal. Eureka is a considerable distance from Sutter's Mill, but was the jumping off point of a smaller gold rush in nearby Trinity County, California in 1850. It is the largest of at least eleven remaining US cities and towns named for the exclamation, "eureka!". As a result of the extensive use of the exclamation dating from 1849, there were nearly 40 locales so named by the 1880s in a nation that had none in the 1840s.[9] Many places, works of culture, and other objects have since been named "Eureka"; see Eureka (disambiguation) for a list.


"Eureka" was also associated with a gold rush in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Eureka Stockade was a revolt in 1854 by gold miners against unjust mining license fees and a brutal administration supervising the miners. The rebellion demonstrated the refusal of the workers to be dominated by unfair government and laws. The Eureka Stockade has often been referred to as the "birth of democracy" in Australia.[10]


Another mathematician, Carl Friedrich Gauss, echoed Archimedes when in 1796 he wrote in his diary, "ΕΥΡΗΚΑ! num = Δ + Δ + Δ", referring to his discovery that any positive integer could be expressed as the sum of at most three triangular numbers.[11] This result is now known as Gauss' Eureka theorem[12] and is a special case of what later became known as the Fermat polygonal number theorem.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ εὑρίσκω. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
  2. ^ "IGCSE Physics Notes: Using Archimedes Principle to Find the Density of an Object". A Star Maths & Physics Tutors. Retrieved 2012-06-06. 
  3. ^ Tom Clegg (2001-04-08). "Eureka!". Retrieved 2012-06-06. 
  4. ^ Vitruvius on Architecture, IX:Introduction:9‑12, translated into English and in the original Latin.
  5. ^ The first Eureka moment, Science 305: 1219, August 2004. Fact or Fiction?: Archimedes Coined the Term "Eureka!" in the Bath, Scientific American, December 2006.
  7. ^ Tipler, Paul A.; Mosca, Gene (2003), Physics for Scientists and Engineers (5th ed.), Macmillan, p. 403, ISBN 9780716783398 .
  8. ^ Official state law defining the motto. Accessed February 26, 2007.
  9. ^ California Place Names, by Erwin Gudde, p. 105
  10. ^ West, Barbara A. (2010). A Brief History of Australia. Infobase Publishing. pp. 66–67. ISBN 9780816078851. 
  11. ^ Bell, Eric Temple (1956). "Gauss, the Prince of Mathematicians". In Newman, James R. The World of Mathematics I. Simon & Schuster. pp. 295–339.  Dover reprint, 2000, ISBN 0-486-41150-8.
  12. ^ Ono, Ken; Robins, Sinai; Wahl, Patrick T. (1995). "On the representation of integers as sums of triangular numbers". Aequationes Mathematicae 50 (1–2): 73–94. doi:10.1007/BF01831114. MR 1336863.