Public Affairs

In honor of Catholic University’s 125th anniversary, a presentation on the discovery and 12-year effort to decipher the Archimedes Palimpsest, the earliest surviving manuscript of the work of Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity.

The 10th-century palimpsest consists of seven treatises by Archimedes, fragments of two speeches by the Athenian orator Hyperides, and portions of a commentary on Aristotle’s “Categories” — all previously hidden under the text of pages of a 13th-century prayer book and revealed with the use of modern imaging technology.

The presenter will be Dr. William Noel, curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., and director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. Noel details the discovery of the Archimedex Palimpsest in the book, “The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist.” Co-written with Reviel Netz, professor of classics and philosophy at Stanford University, the book earned the first Neumann Prize from the British Society for the History of Mathematics in 2009.

A reception will follow.

For more information, contact Peter Gribbin in the School of Arts and Sciences, at gribbin@cua.edu or 202-319-5115.

Individuals requesting accommodations for disabilities should contact cua-access@cua.edu.