Archimedes, the ancient Greek geometer, is often regarded as the greatest mathematician and scientist of antiquity and one of the four greatest mathematicians to have walked the Earth - together with Isaac Newton, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Leonhard Euler. Interesting, Archimedes sometimes sent his colleagues false theorems in order to trap them when they stole his ideas.
The number 7.760271406486818269530232833213 x 10^202544 is the solution to one version of Archimedes' famous "cattle problem," which involve computing the total number of cattle in a puzzle concerning four hypothetical herds of different colors. Archimedes wrote that anyone who could solve the problem would be "crowned with glory" and would be "adjudged perfect in this species of wisdom."
Not until 1880 did mathematicians have an approximate answer.
A more precise number was calculated in 1965 by Canadian mathematicians Hugh C. Williams, R.A. German, and C. Robert Zarnke using IBM 7040 computer.