The Archimedes Palimpsest

Reviel Netz is Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, by courtesy, at Stanford University. His books, most published by Cambridge University Press, include The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History (1999, Runciman Award), The Transformation of Early Mediterranean Mathematics: From Problems to Equations (2004) and Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic (2009). He is also engaged in a translation of and commentary on the complete works of Archimedes, the first volume of which, The Two Books on Sphere and Cylinder, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2004. His popular book on the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, The Archimedes Codex (co-authored with William Noel, Neumann Prize), was published in 2007 and has been translated into twenty languages. William Noel is Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and Director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. His popular book, The Archimedes Codex (co-authored with Reviel Netz, Neumann Prize), was published in 2007 and has been translated into twenty languages. He is a member of the Faculty of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and is Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Noel received his doctorate from Cambridge University in 1993 and has published widely on European manuscript illumination in the period 800 to 1300 and on the Archimedes Palimpsest. Nigel Wilson is a Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow and Tutor (Emeritus) at Lincoln College, Oxford. He has had long experience of research on Greek manuscripts and editing texts. His works include Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (with L. D. Reynolds, 3rd edition 1991) and Scholars of Byzantium (revised edition 1996). Natalie Tchernetska is a leading manuscript scholar specialising in Greek palimpsests. Educated in Riga, St Petersburg and Geneva, she conducted research in Rome and Hamburg and completed her doctorate at Cambridge University. In the late 1990s she was one of the first manuscript scholars in the world to venture into the field of digital imaging. In 2002 she discovered and identified the fragments of two speeches of Hyperides in the Archimedes Palimpsest; this discovery radically changed our view of the survival of Hyperides in Byzantium.

'The imminent massive publication of a complete facsimile and transcription will be a huge gift to the study of ancient mathematics.' Alexander Jones, Wall Street Journal

• Introduction: the Archimedes Palimpsest project William Noel; Part I. The Manuscripts: Part II. History: 1. The making of the Euchologion Abigail Quandt; 2. The strange and eventful history of the Archimedes Palimpsest John Lowden; 3. Itinera Archimedea: on Heiberg in Constantinople and Archimedes in Copenhagen Erik Petersen; Part III. Conservation: 4. Conserving the Archimedes Palimpsest Abigail Quandt; Part IV. The Digital Palimpsest: 5. Imaging and image-processing techniques William A. Christens-Barry, Roger L. Easton, Jr and Keith T. Knox; 6. Imaging with x-ray fluorescence Uwe Bergmann; 7. The Palimpsest data set Doug Emery, Alex Lee and Michael Toth; Part V. The Texts: 8. The Palimpsest in context Natalie Tchernetska and Nigel Wilson; 9. The place of Codex C in Archimedes scholarship Reviel Netz; Appendix: concordance of foliations.