Archimedes in Bits: Ten Years of Work on the Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a manuscript of extraordinary importance to the history of science. This thirteenth century prayer book contains erased texts that were written several centuries earlier still. These erased texts include two treatises by Archimedes that can be found nowhere else, The Method and Stomachion. The manuscript sold at auction to a private collector on the 29th October 1998. The owner deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, a few months later. Since that date the manuscript has been the subject of conservation, imaging and scholarship, in order to better read the texts. The Archimedes Palimpsest project, as it is called, has shed new light on Archimedes and revealed new texts from the ancient world. It has also generated a great deal of public curiosity, as well as the interest of scholars throughout the world.

On 29th October 2008, we celebrated the ten year anniversary of the project. What was erased text, in terrible condition, impossible to access, and yet foundational to the history and science of the West, is now legible, and instantly available for free on the Web. This talk will cover the evolution of the project as well as its future directions.