The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist
by Reviel Netz, William Noel

The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist
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Book Summary Information

Author: Reviel Netz, William Noel
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-10-22
ISBN: 030681580X
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Da Capo Press

Book Reviews of The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

Book Review: Two Fascinating Books In One
Summary: 4 Stars

The format chosen by the two authors of this book is that they each wrote alternating chapters. One author, a curator of manuscripts and rare books wrote the chapters mainly dealing with the nature of manuscripts and codices, the organization of the project, the objectives at hand, the logistics, the methods used, the technology, etc. The other author, a professor of ancient sciences, concentrated mainly on the reading, deciphering and mathematical interpretation of the ancient writings and their meaning in terms of what we know about Archimedes. Although alternating chapters have different focuses, they blend easily one into the other without any significant discontinuity. Both writing styles are clear, friendly and authoritative. The mathematical expositions are generally accessible, although in some cases the terminology used is more of an ancient style than what one would find in a modern mathematics textbook; as a result, some arguments are difficult to follow. I have learned much from this book: about Archimedes' accomplishments, about ancient manuscripts and codices, about methods and apparatuses used to image ancient texts and about the incredible complexity of the whole project. It is difficult to estimate which types of readers would be most interested in this book since it contains so much that could be of interest to different people, i.e., ancient and medieval history, history of mathematics, modern technology, physics, detective work, etc. But, it is likely that readers interested in any of the above subjects would enjoy it.

Summary of The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

At a Christie’s auction in October 1998, a battered medieval manuscript sold for two million dollars to an anonymous bidder, who then turned it over to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore for further study. The manuscript was a palimpsest-a book made from an earlier codex whose script had been scraped off and the pages used again. Behind the script of the thirteenth-century monk’s prayer book, the palimpsest revealed the faint writing of a much older, tenth-century manuscript. Part archaeological detective story, part science, and part history, The Archimedes Codex tells the extraordinary story of this lost manuscript, from its tenth-century creation in Constantinople to the auction block at Christie’s, and how a team of scholars used the latest imaging technology to reveal and decipher the original text. What they found was the earliest surviving manuscript by Archimedes (287 b.c.-212 b.c.), the greatest mathematician of antiquity-a manuscript that revealed, for the first time, the full range of his mathematical genius, which was two thousand years ahead of modern science.

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