The Archimedes codex; how a medieval prayer book is revealing the true genius of antiquity's greatest scientist

Reference & Research Book News, Feb, 2008

The Archimedes codex; how a medieval prayer book is revealing the true genius of antiquity's greatest scientist.

Netz, Reviel and William Noel.

Da Capo Press

2007

313 pages

$27.50

Hardcover

B68

Three books containing texts by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes survived the carnage of the 1204 Fourth Crusade; two survived long enough to be seen and used by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo. The third was unknown until 1998 when it was discovered overwritten by 13th-century Christian prayers. Netz (classics and philosophy, Stanford U.) and Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum and director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, tells what is known about its history, about the ongoing project to recover the text, and about the information it contains that has not been seen for eight centuries.

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