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The Archimedes Codex

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

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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, <i>The Archimedes Codex</i> 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.

Acquisto del libro

The Archimedes Codex, Reviel Netz, William Noel

Lingua
Pubblicato
2007
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(Copertina rigida),
Condizioni del libro
In ottime condizioni
Prezzo
11,49 €

Metodi di pagamento

Titolo
The Archimedes Codex
Sottotitolo
How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist
Lingua
Inglese
Pubblicato
2007
Formato
Copertina rigida
Pagine
352
ISBN10
030681580X
ISBN13
9780306815805
Serie
Descrizione
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, <i>The Archimedes Codex</i> 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.