In 1906, Danish classics professor John Heiberg discovered the lost manuscript and identified the underlying text as unknown writings by Archimedes. Heiberg photographed many of the pages that showed the faint Archimedes text, but missed some important passages and was unable to photograph the parts of the pages beneath the palimpsest bindings. The parchment then fell into the hands of a private collector in France, who altered and damaged parts of the palimpsest. Lost again, it resurfaced at Christie's auction house in 1998 and was purchased by an anonymous donor for $2 million. Since then, the Archimedes Palimpsest has been in the care of The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where they're conserving, imaging, and deciphering it.
The Archimedes Palimpsest contains seven of the Greek mathematician's treatises. Most importantly, it is the only surviving copy of On Floating Bodies in the original Greek, and the unique source for the Method of Mechanical Theorems and Stomachion.
live webcast at 4pm Pacific time, August 4
archimedespalimpsest.org
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