William Noel and the Archimedes Codex [video 42min]

William Noel discusses his book The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, co-written with Reviel Netz. In October 1998 at an auction at Christie's in New York, an anonymous American book collector purchased a 13th-century prayer book for $2 million. The prayer book is a palimpsest -- a book that was written over older words that had been scrapped off the animal skin or parchment pages. In this case, the prayer book was written over 10th-century manuscript copies of treatises by the ancient Greek mathmatician Archimedes (287-212BC). The anonymous bidder deposited the manuscript with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and has funded a 10-year project to read the works under the prayer book. Noel is Curator of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and Director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. Noel was interviewed at the Walters Art Museum on December 14th 2007.