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Domenico Fetti painted me seventeen centuries after my death, staring at a diagram, absorbed. I appreciate the instinct. I was never more alive than when working on a problem.

The story they tell is that I ran naked through the streets shouting Eureka. I may have been excited when I discovered the principle of displacement — that a body immersed in fluid displaces its own volume — but I would like to think I put on a robe first. What I remember is the bath, the water rising, and then the thought arriving complete, fully formed, as good thoughts always do: from the body before the mind has been consulted.