Archimedes fate fate

Archimedes' great manuscript journey is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of science. For 2,000 years, this document has been " mistreated ", torn apart and discarded for dust of time. Now, an American historian group is reviving it .

When the Roman army arrived in Sicily and then took over the city of Syracuse (at that time of the Greeks), a Roman soldier suddenly met an old man sitting calmly, despite the surrounding fighting, drawing pictures and drawing pictures. learning and math equations on sand. ' Don't ruin these circles, ' he said.

However, the Roman mercenary not only ruined the circles on the sand but also raised his sword to kill him! At least that is a fairly popular legend about Archimedes' death. Historical truth is different.

Assigned to study artillery systems for Hieron II (King Syracuse from 270-215 BC), Archimedes played an important role in military science during the occupation of Syracuse with many spectacular inventions . He invented a powerful type of slap that could break the enemy warship with rock bullets. He also used a large mirror to gather light to help burn the Roman warship. Thanks to him, Sicily's resistance lasted for more than 2 years.

At 73, Archimedes was killed by Rome. His death - in the sarcastic way of the famous British philosopher Paul Strathern - is' Rome's only prerequisite contribution to mathematics! '. It is difficult to fully explore the foundations for the particular mathematics and general science of Archimedes (285-212 BC), who went into the history of human civilization with the famous saying ' Eureka ' (I played currently).

(Photo: Malaspina.edu)

Unfortunately, many goatskin documents about Archimedes' works were lost, while the rest were rewritten in Arabic and Latin. It took a lot of time to discover the original Greek manuscript of Archimedes .

In 1906, the Danish Professor Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1854-1928), when studying many ancient Greek documents, found a textbook of goat with verses written in the XIII century with an additional text. Heiberg, after a careful study, confirmed that it was one of the most unprecedented documents, documenting the many works of Archimedes (shortly after, the document was used by mathematician-historian famous Englishman Thomas Heath, 1861-1940, translated into English).

According to the website specializing in the Archimedes manuscript (archimedespalimpsest.org), along with the rise of the Byzantine Empire at the time of the 9th - Xth century, when science was promoted and promoted, the copying of ancient scientific documents, in which Archimedes works began to explode. That must have been the time when the Archimedes goat manuscript was formed (in 2002, using ultraviolet ray technology, Professor John Lowden at the Courtauld Institute at the University of London decoded the last page of the document, including the date). is April 13, 1229).

Until before being classified by the Greek scholar Papadopoulos-Kerameus in 1899, the goat skin book was still considered a biblical textbook. According to Der Spiegel (June 22, 2007), a historian for the Byzantine court must have written a book of goatskin which recorded Archimedes' work around 950.

In 1229, a monk used a goat manuscript to ' recycle ' in order to reuse it . Using a sponge and lemon juice, he scrubbed his goat skin book, cut clean pages in half and closed it into a new book, used to write sutras and ritual ceremonies (not just Archimedes documents, ministry The book of the original goat skin also has 10 pages of Hyperides - the famous rhetoric living in Athens around 350 BC, as well as some pages of Aristotle philosophers.

Manuscript Archimedes at Walters Art Museum.(Photo: msn / ap)

Also during the Middle Ages, the goat skin booklet was brought to the Greek Orthodox monastery. Savvas near Jerusalem. In the middle of the nineteenth century, after passing through two more locations, it was transferred to Constantinople (which had been the center of the Byzantine Empire before it fell to the Ottoman hands in 1453; as well as the cradle of the Church. Official religion).

Then, almost no one knew where the Archimedes manuscript stayed, until 1923, when it was in the suitcase of businessman Marie Louis Sirieix, who said he bought the manuscript from a monk (real bad story) How is this still a mystery because Sirieix cannot prove by purchase receipts or similar papers). When Sirieix died in 1956, the Archimedes manuscript remained hidden in his basement in Paris. Influenced by the humid climate and time, the Archimedes manuscript was badly damaged, looking worse than a stack of paper!

In the 70s of the twentieth century, with the intention of turning Archimedes' manuscript into gold, Sirieix's daughter printed 200 books on ancient documents and silently went to museums in Europe and America to introduce and advertise. sell.

Finally, on October 29, 1998, at Christie's auction house, the Archimedes manuscript - named ' Eureka 9058 ' - was brought to auction. A few days earlier, a cleric in Jerusalem tried to stop the auction but failed.

At the auction, the Greek Consul General in New York also attempted to buy the Archimedes manuscript, because he considered it a part of his national cultural heritage but succumbed at $ 1.9 million. .

Finally, the Archimedes manuscript was sold for $ 2.2 million, for an anonymous " billionaire of the computer industry " (so far this secret buyer has not yet been revealed but some of the characters in the meeting) understand that believe it is Jeffrey Bezos, founder of online shopping site Amazon.com).

Later, the buyer lent the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland) . Here, the manuscripts are studied by modern techniques to reveal the ink erased from the Middle Ages. Many geometric figures and mathematical methods appeared in the light of ultraviolet rays and it is now possible to confirm that it is an ancient document about the massive works of modern science User Archimedes. In September 2007, the modern version of the entire manuscript Archimedes will be published .

Le Thao Chi