In 1998 a battered manuscript was won at auction for two million dollars by an anonymous buyer. It was a palimpsest – a book that was made from the pages stripped from earlier works where the earlier words were scrapped off and a new text was written over it. This was common practice in medieval times when paper was a valuable commodity. The book that was purchased was a simple thirteenth-century payer book. However, that is not what made the book valuable. The real value was the faint impressions of the much older tenth-century writing buried underneath it. It was the earliest writing of perhaps the greatest mathematicians in history – Archimedes.

Co-written by Reviel Netz – a Professor of Classics at Stanford University, and William Noel – the Curator of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, The Archimedes Codex chronicles the ongoing, decade-long project to discover just how deep the knowledge of Archimedes went. Archimedes was an ancient mathematician born nearly 300 years before the birth of Christ who made discoveries about the nature of mathematics that are only now being fully understood – 2,000 years after Archimedes first wrote them down.

The magic of the Archimedes Codex is that there is no other copy of these specific writings in existence. In fact, even now after ten years of investigation of the text, including the use of brand new technologies never before used for such purposes, they are still discovering more about the extent of Archimedes’ genius.

The writing in The Archimedes Codex itself is nothing spectacular, but it is good enough to get the points across. They do a good job of explaining the importance of the mathematical principles in a way that most people can at least appreciate, even if almost nobody can completely understand it. Even so, there are times when it becomes a really dry read, even for me – and I’m an accountant! What is far more interesting is the preservation and recovery process of the book itself. The simple fact that the book survived this long is amazing. The book is literally falling apart and all of the scientists involved are taking monumental steps to do as little damage to it as they can. The lengths that they have gone to in order to extract the impressions of words buried in the paper are fascinating. Already, they have discovered that Archimedes knew even more about modern mathematical principles then was originally believed.

The book itself is not a great piece of writing, but the subject is fascinating to learn about. In addition, this should be a cautionary tale of why books should never, ever be destroyed and why preserving ancient manuscripts by digitizing them doesn’t necessarily preserve everything we might someday learn from the book itself. For that reason alone, this is a good book for book lovers and collectors to experience. It made for interesting reading on a truly unique piece of history. ( )

This is a fascinating book, especially if you like history, old books, technology, and Greek mathematics. I found the story to be incredibly interesting, but the book itself seems to be very poorly organized. Every other chapter is written by one of the authors and they each have very different styles. Each chapter feels like a paper or article more than a chapter in a highly organized book. Still very good read though. ( )

No, The Archimedes Codex is not - blessedly - one of the growing number of DaVinci Code clone-novels, but rather a really intriguing look into the inner workings of the Archimedes Palimpsest project, an effort (begun more than 10 years ago now) to recover and understand the works contained in what surely must now be the most famous palimpsest in existence.

Co-written (in alternating chapters) by project manager William Noel (a curator at the Walters Museum in Baltimore) and Reviel Netz (a Stanford professor of classics and philosophy), the book recounts the troubled past and revealing present of the manuscript codex, offering up a good book history story as well as interesting looks and explanations of how the discoveries being made with the use of the codex are changing our understanding of ancient math and science.

It is not often that such a revealing portrait of the process behind a major research project like this are made public in this way, which makes this book all the more interesting. I really enjoyed learning how very decisions came to be taken as various conservation and imaging processes were carried out on the book so that it could give up its secrets. And, dense as they were, Netz' chapters on Archimedean mathematics were written with sufficient clarity that even I managed to understand them.

The entire project, which has resulted in any number of conventional-wisdom-changing discoveries, has fascinated me for quite a while; my first post on it was way back in August 2006, just a few weeks after I started blogging here. I've added several more since, as new findings have been released. Most recently, I noted the release of the full dataset, which will (and presumably already has) allowed other scholars to find still more secrets of the palimpsest.

Enjoyable and fun to read - the enthusiasm Noel and Netz exude is contagious, even through the printed page.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )

If ever there was a book that cried out for a good science writer, this is it. The story of the recent decipherment of a palimpsest containing unknown works by Archimedes, Hyperides, and others is absolutely fascinating. This book, however, written by two of the classicists working on the project, manages to be a bit dull. ( )

The Archimedes Codex is a hard book to review. Not because I am ambiguous about it, in the contrary, I loved it. Non-fiction hardly ever gets a five point rating from me, I'm way to critical. This one however, deserved it's five point rating. Then wat makes this book so hard to review?

There's too much in it to accurately describe this book. There is math, history, new techniques, conservation of old documents, and a great deal of mystery and discoveries. It combines so much sciences, and it's not just about Archimedes, although the palimpsest does contain a lot of Archimedes.

Althought the devision of where to tell what part of the story is a bit unconventional, it fits this book, and the palimpsest it tells you about. I can greatly recommend you this book, even if you don't like math! Yes, there is math in it, but you don't have to understand, or even like, math, to be impressed with this book. It's highly recommended. ( )