Em 29 de outubro de 1998, a venda de um livro extremamente velho, feio e nada atraente, arrematado por 2 milhões de dólares em um leilão feito pela Christie’s de Nova York, ganhou as páginas da imprensa. O desgastado livro de orações de um padre medieval, chamuscado pelo fogo, manchado de água e parafina e corroído pelo mofo, escondia um dos maiores tesouros científicos de todos os tempos. Sob as orações, quase invisível devido às manchas, jazia escondido o texto do mais antigo manuscrito do grande matemático do mundo antigo, Arquimedes de Siracusa (287-212 A.C.).Encarregados de decifrar as páginas do precioso palimpsesto (pergaminho cujo conteúdo foi apagado mediante lavagem ou raspagem e reescrito), que permaneceu oculto por mais de mil anos, William Noel, curador de Manuscritos e Livros Raros do Museu de Arte Walters, e o historiador Reviel Netz trazem à luz em CÓDEX ARQUIMEDES, uma década depois do leilão, as idéias perdidas do grande gênio da matemática.O livro com o texto de Arquimedes teve suas páginas raspadas, recebeu novo texto, foi danificado e permaneceu nas prateleiras de um mosteiro antigo. Resistiu às cruzadas e às guerras mundiais, viajando do Oriente ao Ocidente. Descoberto em 1906, foi estudado por um breve período e ficou perdido novamente por quase um século antes de ressurgir em Paris há 11 anos.Graças a mais moderna tecnologia de imagem ao trabalho de uma dedicada equipe acadêmica de cientistas, técnicos e conservadores, seu conteúdo original foi desvendado, apresentando resultados surpreendentes que mudam de maneira fundamental nossa compreensão sobre a história da ciência. À medida que os textos iam sendo revelados, foi se descobrindo que as idéias matemáticas do cientista eram muito mais sofisticadas do que se pensava antes, e que Arquimedes teria, de fato, mais razões do que imaginávamos para gritar “Eureca!” em seus banhos. Entre as incríveis descobertas, revelou-se a cópia integral do revolucionário O Método, o lúdico Stomachion, abrangendo tópicos que iam da gravidade ao Infinito, e a única fonte original em grego de Corpos Flutuantes – talvez seu tratado mais famoso. Numa mistura de história de detetive e aventura com romance e ciência, William Noel e Reviel Netz traçam a incrível jornada do volume corroído por traças que atravessou séculos, em uma narrativa que alterna a história do próprio livro e a história da evolução da ciência que suas páginas revelam.

Ma che bel libro! Unisce due mie grandi passioni - la matematica e i libri antichi - in un modo fluido e coerente. La storia di Archimede è appassionante, ma altrettanto lo è quella del palinsesto su cui hanno lavorato per ormai quasi dieci anni gli autori del libro (scritto a due mani). Da leggere. ( )

It is rare that “lost” writings of ancient scientists and philosophers are discovered today. But this is exactly what happened in 1998 when a medieval prayer book was offered for sale. It was a codex (a manuscript book) with several missing pages and several forged pictures, but the parchment reused by the medieval scribe contained texts from Archimedes and other ancient scholars. It became clear that this was a manuscript that went missing in the mid 20th century but had been studied earlier in the century by the noted Archimedes scholar Heiberg.

This sets the stage for the book, the joint efforts of Reviel Netz, a scholar of ancient science, and William Noel, curator of the Walters Art Museum. They traded chapters with Dr. Netz writing about the Archimedes and his math and science and Dr. Noel writing about the book and its challenges, the building of the team to read the underlying palimpsest (and in the case of the forgeries, the prayer book text), and discovering the other lost writings including some pages of Hyperides, a Greek orator.

The science and math was challenging to understand, especially the math notation. Once I could equate the notation of Archimedes with one that I knew and understood, the reading became much easier. The science of imaging was one of the most interesting sections of Dr. Noel’s presentation. The images were clearly presented in the text with 16 pages of color plates and numerous black and white images. The authors also provided a website for the Archimedes project that contains images as well text and video. The bibliography is extensive and includes much supplemental reading.

For anyone interested in manuscripts, codices, palimpsests, math and the beginning of modern science, this book is a great introduction. ( )

This is a fine random history that details the life, death and resurrection of the lost writings of Archimedes, a thinker far, far ahead of his time. He was on the cusp of mathematical theories that did not come to fruition until literally 1800 or more years after his death. The Archimedes Codex is almost two books in one, alternating chapters between the two authors. Noel is a mucketymuck at the Walters Art Museum where the restoration of an ancient palimpsest was done and Netz is an expert on ancient Greek mathematics and geometry who was brought in to decipher the text and diagrams.
In a nutshell, the palimpsest was originally a manuscript of a copy (in Greek) of several works of Archimedes, later the ink was scraped off, the pages rotated ninety degrees and scribed over with medieval prayers. That, by the way, is the definition of a palimpsest. There is historical investigation about the life story of the manuscript through the ages, few chapters about the life of Archimedes, the purchase of the actual codex at auction, some ingenious geometric proofs, a bit about the fundamental differences between Greek math and current math, and some fairly technical information about imaging methods used to recover the scraped off text, like using an X-ray scanner to atomically reconstruct the constituents of the text by locating the iron in the ancient ink. All in all a very nice book. ( )

This book is the portuguese translation of the english original The Archimedes Codex. The wonderful tale of the (re)discovery of the Archimedes Palimpsest, of the research that allowed us to read Archimedes' text, and of what we have learned (so far) from it. The book intersperses chapters about the book as an object (its history as well as the techniques for its restauration and study) with chapters about Archimedes and his mathematics. Of course the part about the history of the book is jaw dropping, but those chapters concerning Archimedes' mathematics, both of what was already known and of those parts unique to the Palimpsest (the actual infinity in the Method, and the combinatorics in the Stomachion) are truly great. Our mind really boggles when thinking either about the geniality of Archimedes' thought in the 3rd century BCE, the incredibly hasards this manuscript (a copy probably written twelve centuries after his death) has suffered, and the extraordinary refinement of the late 20th century technology that was needed in order to recover the original text and to have in from of us the words written twenty three centuries ago by one of the most genial minds that has ever lived. ( )