Scientists are decoding an ancient mathematics book that contains 2000-year-old ideas that could have changed the course of history. Written by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, who was born about 287 B.C., the book contains concepts that others wouldn't discover for centuries.
As shown on PBS’s NOVA, the ancient book is not exactly in pristine shape. “The manuscript was heavily damaged by mold,” Abigail Quandt, senior conservator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum told NOVA. “The parchment is perforated where the fungi have actually gone through and digested the collagen, and it means that the Archimedes text is just totally missing in these areas.”
But the larger problem with the book is that Archimedes’s text was hidden some 800 years ago by a medieval monk who ran out of paper for his prayer book. The monk took pages out of the Archimedes book, turned them sideways, washed away the ink, and wrote over it. Still, there is a faint trace of the Archimedes text, and some 900 years later, a team of scientists is teasing the two texts apart.
"We are trying to take advantage of the very slight differences in color of the two inks, of the inks from the Archimedes text and the later ink,” explained Roger Easton, associate professor of optical sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. “So we did that by taking images at a wide variety of wavelengths."
Full Story
