STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum

Presentation of Interest

• Date:   Fri, 26 Apr 2002 10:14:19 -0400
• To:   sthc-l@library.ucla.edu
• From:   Cheryl StadelBevans <cheryl.stadel@nara.gov>
• Subject:   Presentation of Interest
• Message-ID:   scc9289e.039@smtp.nara.gov

If you or someone you know will be in the DC area, I 
would recommend going to hear this talk. I heard Dr. Noel give a 
talk on this subject last weekend at a conference I attended. The 
story of this manuscript and the slides documenting the work done 
on it are fascinating.

Cheryl

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Lecture: Eureka! The Archimedes Palimpsest

Time and Place: 12 noon on Tuesday, May 14, Library of Congress,
                  Woodrow Wilson Room, LJ 113.

   An anonymous American collector purchased an old
   goatskin book for $2 million at Christie's New York on Oct.
   29, 1998.  Approximately 1,000 years of use and abuse
   meant this prize manuscript was fragile and worn, tortured
   by weather, fire, glue, and the simple passage of time.

   The physical item, in dire need of restoration, was rescued,
   and modern digital technology revealed the Greek record of
   Archimedes's treatise, On Floating Bodies. Born in the third
   century, Archimedes was one of antiquity's greatest
   mathematicians and scientists.

   Since January 1999, the palimpsest has been on loan to the
   Walters Art Museum in Baltimore for the purpose of
   conservation and research.  The scientific treatises now
   available include the only known original Greek copy of
   Archimedes's On Floating Bodies.  Previously the work
   survived only in a medieval Latin translation.  The newly
   available manuscript reveals the earlier Greek text and fills in
   some gaps in the Latin version.

   William Noel, curator of manuscripts and rare books at the
   Walters Art Museum, will discuss the palimpsest at noon on
   Tuesday, May 14, in the Woodrow Wilson Room, LJ 113.
   He will talk about the history of this book, its scholarly worth
   today, and the journey of the parchment since the thoughts
   of Archimedes were recorded in Greek in about 1000 A.D.

   Noel's presentation will include explanations and slide
   illustrations of the conservation and digitizing techniques
   employed to lift the Greek text from the obscurity to which it
   was doomed in the 12th century, when it was scraped off
   the parchment to provide a clean surface for the
   transcription of another text.  This palimpsest technique was
   a typical medieval recycling method.  The immediate need
   was not for ancient mathematical formulas but for written
   prayers.

   Noel's presentation, "Eureka!? The Archimedes
   Palimpsest," is sponsored jointly by the Humanities and
   Social Sciences Division and the Science, Technology and
   Business Division.  It is free and open to the public.