Heron of Alexandria

Heron of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt. He is often considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity and his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific tradition. Heron published a well-recognized description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile. Among his most famous inventions was a windwheel, constituting the earliest instance of wind harnessing on land. In mathematics he is mostly remembered for Heron's formula, a way to calculate the area of a triangle using only the lengths of its sides.