ARCHIMEDES CODEX, THE - HOW A MEDIEVAL PRAYER BOOK IS REVEALING THE TRUE GENIUS OF ANTIQUITY'S GREAT

The history of mathematics can't be properly told without mention of Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 B.C.-c. 212 B.C.), yet this ancient Greek very nearly disappeared from history. His known body of work was contained in three manuscripts, two of which have vanished. The third survived thanks to a 13th-century monastic scribe who copied a devotional book onto a previously used palimpsest. It was not until 1906 that a scholar discovered that an imperfectly erased mathematical text lay beneath. 'The Archimedes Codex' tells the story of this discovery, the recovery of seven long-lost treatises, and how they have changed the history of mathematics and science.