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Who really said it

Eureka! I have found it!

Attributed to Archimedes c. 287 – c. 212 BC · Greek mathematician, physicist & engineer of Syracuse
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The bath story is first recorded by the Roman architect Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IX, preface — written in the first century BC, roughly two centuries after Archimedes died. Vitruvius reports a single Greek word, εὕρηκα, shouted twice; nothing in Archimedes’ own surviving writings mentions the episode, and the familiar English tag “I have found it!” is simply what translators add to gloss Eureka.

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Eureka! I have found it!” attributed to Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BC). First recorded by Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IX, preface, first century BC — roughly two centuries after Archimedes' death, and not mentioned in his own surviving writings. "Eureka" already means "I have found it"; the English half of the popular version is a translator's gloss. Via Quotle.info

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Evoking the world of Archimedes — Greek mathematician, physicist & engineer of Syracuse. Theme: "Eureka! I have found it!". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Eureka! I have found it!". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The earliest ancient source

Source
De architectura (The Ten Books on Architecture), Book IX, preface
Written by
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Roman architect — not Archimedes
Date
First century BC — roughly two centuries after Archimedes’ death (c. 212 BC)
Translation
Joseph Gwilt (London: Priestley and Weale, 1826); also Morris Hicky Morgan (Harvard University Press, 1914)

… he immediately followed it up, leapt out of the vessel in joy, and, returning home naked, cried out with a loud voice that he had found that of which he was in search, for he continued exclaiming, in Greek, εὑρηκα, (I have found it out). Book IX, preface

Look closely at what is inside the parentheses. “I have found it out” is Gwilt’s translation of the Greek word immediately before it — a footnote for readers who don’t read Greek, not a second sentence Archimedes shouted. Morgan’s 1914 version, as reproduced on Chris Rorres’s Archimedes pages, renders the same moment as the Greek doubled: “Εὕρηκα, εὕρηκα.”

Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IX (Gwilt translation) at LacusCurtius

How we verified this

  • First century BC — the earliest surviving witness. The story appears in Vitruvius’s De architectura, Book IX, preface: King Hiero suspects his goldsmith has cut a votive crown with silver, Archimedes solves it in the bath, and runs home shouting. The Latin reads Nam currens identidem graecè clamabat Eurica, Eurica — one word, repeated, as reproduced with the Morgan translation on Chris Rorres’s Archimedes source pages, hosted at NYU ↗. Vitruvius is the earliest account, not the only one: Wikipedia notes ↗ that the story “is told again a century later by Plutarch, though in a shortened version” — which only pushes the first telling further from the man.
  • The gap nobody can close. Archimedes died around 212 BC. Scientific American ↗ dates the telling: “The oldest authority for the naked-Archimedes eureka story is Vitruvius, a Roman writer, who included the tale in his introduction to his ninth book of architecture some time in the first century B.C.” That is roughly two centuries of silence between the bath and the first surviving word about it.
  • Archimedes never mentions it. Scientific American’s “Fact or Fiction?” ↗ notes that Archimedes himself never wrote about the episode, though he documented a great deal else, and quotes mathematician Chris Rorres on the displacement method: it “works in theory so it sounds right but when you actually try it you find that the real world gets in the way.”
  • Where the reference works land. Wikiquote ↗ carries it in its main quotes section — not under Misattributed — sourced to “Vitruvius Pollio in De Architectura, ix.215,” and glosses εὕρηκα as “I have found it! or I have got it!, commonly quoted as Eureka!” — the gloss and the exclamation presented as the same thing, which is exactly the point.
Public domain

Vitruvius wrote in the first century BC, so the underlying text is long out of copyright, and rights here turn on the translation you quote. Both standard English versions that carry this passage predate 1931 and are public domain in the US: Joseph Gwilt’s (London: Priestley and Weale, 1826), reproduced at LacusCurtius ↗, and Morris Hicky Morgan’s (Harvard University Press, 1914), which Project Gutenberg ↗ hosts in full. A post-1931 translation of the same passage would be a different matter.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

What’s wrong with the famous version

This one is unusual. The quote isn’t pinned on the wrong person — an ancient source really does put it in Archimedes’ mouth. The problem is subtler, and there are three layers of it.

A translator’s gloss, read as a second exclamation Redundant

Eureka — εὕρηκα — means “I have found it.” It is the first-person perfect of the Greek verb ‘to find’, as Wikipedia sets out ↗. You can see the redundancy being born in Gwilt’s 1826 translation, which prints the English in parentheses as a gloss on the Greek immediately before it: “εὑρηκα, (I have found it out)” — a note for readers without Greek, not a second thing Archimedes shouted. Exactly how that gloss hardened into the popular doubled tag isn’t documented; what is certain is that “Eureka! I have found it!” says the same thing twice, in two languages.

Vitruvius, writing roughly 200 years later Second-hand

No contemporary of Archimedes records the bath, the crown, or the shout. The earliest surviving account is Vitruvius’s, and Scientific American ↗ notes that Archimedes never wrote about the episode himself — leaving two centuries in which a good story could be improved in the telling.

Doubted by scientists from Galileo onward Doubted

Even if he said it, the water-displacement test as Vitruvius describes it may not be what he actually did. Scholars have objected ↗ that an adulterated crown would displace only a minutely different volume of water — a difference the instruments of the day could not reliably measure.

The likeliest truth: Archimedes really did crack hydrostatics, and he wrote the real proof down himself in On Floating Bodies — no bathtub required. The shout is Vitruvius’s, two centuries after the fact, and it was only ever one word. Read the passage yourself ↗ and you’ll see the second half of the famous quote sitting quietly inside a translator’s parentheses.

Context

Why it matters

It is the most famous exclamation in the history of science, and it is a single word — a word that already contains its own translation. Every time someone writes “Eureka! I have found it!” they are saying it twice: once in Greek, once in the English that translators supply to explain the Greek.

That’s a small joke, but it points at something real. The Archimedes we quote is almost entirely a literary character assembled by Romans and Greeks writing generations after his death — the bath, the burning mirrors, the last words in the sand. The Archimedes who actually existed left behind something far better than an exclamation: rigorous proofs, in his own hand, that still hold. On Floating Bodies needs no anecdote to be astonishing.

“Eureka” already means “I have found it.” The famous quote is one word and its own footnote, holding hands.

So what did the crown test actually involve?

Vitruvius describes a volume comparison: take a mass of pure gold and a mass of pure silver, each weighing the same as the crown, and measure how much water each displaces. Then measure the crown. If it displaces more than the gold, it isn’t pure gold. The logic is sound and the arithmetic works.

The trouble is engineering, not maths. A votive crown is not large, an adulterated one displaces only a hair more water than a pure one, and surface tension alone can swamp the difference. Galileo doubted the account, and mathematician Chris Rorres put the modern objection compactly to Scientific American ↗: the volumetric method “works in theory so it sounds right but when you actually try it you find that the real world gets in the way.” A balance scale weighing the crown against gold while both were submerged would have been far more practical — and rather more like the Archimedes of the surviving treatises.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Knowledge Success

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IX (Gwilt, 1826)penelope.uchicago.edu

The primary source, in full. The Eureka passage is in the preface — note the English gloss sitting inside parentheses.
The Golden Crown: Vitruvius (Rorres)math.nyu.edu

The Latin text beside Morgan’s 1914 translation, on Chris Rorres’s scholarly Archimedes source pages, hosted at NYU.
Fact or Fiction?: Archimedes Coined the Term “Eureka!” in the Bathscientificamerican.com

The best short debunk: the 200-year gap, Archimedes’ own silence, and why the displacement test likely wouldn’t have worked.
Eureka (word)en.wikipedia.org

Etymology and meaning — establishes that “Eureka” already is “I have found it,” plus the scholarly doubts.
Archimedes — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its main quotes section sourced to Vitruvius, De Architectura ix.215 — notably not under Misattributed.
Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture (Morgan, 1914)gutenberg.org

The full public-domain Morgan translation, free to read and reuse.

The true author

The man who really did discover it

Archimedes

c. 287 – c. 212 BC · Greek mathematician, physicist & engineer of Syracuse

Archimedes of Syracuse was the ancient world’s most formidable mathematician — he pinned down π between useful bounds, worked out the law of the lever, and founded the study of hydrostatics, the science of bodies in fluid — though the bath story as Vitruvius tells it turns on measuring displaced volume, not on the buoyancy principle that carries his name. A substantial body of his own writing survives, including On Floating Bodies, and it is meticulous, formal, and entirely silent about crowns, baths, and running naked through Syracuse. Almost everything colourful we ‘know’ about him — the bath, the burning mirrors, the death at a Roman sword while drawing figures in the sand — reaches us from writers working centuries after his death.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Vitruvius. The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Book IX, preface. Translated by Joseph Gwilt. London: Priestley and Weale, 1826. Also Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 253–54.

MLA (9th ed.)

Vitruvius. The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. Translated by Joseph Gwilt, Priestley and Weale, 1826.

APA (7th ed.)

Vitruvius. (1826). The architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (J. Gwilt, Trans.). Priestley and Weale. (Original work published 1st century BCE)

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Eureka! I have found it!’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/eureka-i-have-found-it

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