Book description
Drawings and writings by Archimedes, previously thought to have been
destroyed, have been uncovered beneath the pages of a 13th-century
monk's prayer book. These hidden texts, slowly being retrieved and
deciphered by scientists, show that Archimedes' thinking (2,200 years
ago) was even ahead of Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Archimedes
discovered the value of Pi, he developed the theory of specific gravity
and made steps towards the development of calculus. Everything we know
about him comes from three manuscripts, two of which have disappeared.
The third, currently in the Walters Art Museum, is a palimpsest - the
text has been scraped off, the book taken apart and its parchment
re-used, in this case as a prayer book. William Noel, the project
director, and Reviel Netz, a historian of ancient mathematics, tell the
enthralling story of the survival of that prayer book from 1229 to the
present, and examine the process of recovering the invaluable text
underneath as well as investigating into why that text is so important.
Reviel Netz is Professor of Ancient Science at Stanford University, a
leading authority on Archimedes, and editor of the Archimedes
Palimpsest. William Noel is Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the
Walters Art Museum and Director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project.
