Scholarly study of the Archimedes Palimpsest began in earnest at the same time that Abigail Quandt began to take the book apart, in April of 2000. The principle scholars on the project at the stage were Nigel Wilson, Reviel Netz, and Natalie Tchernetska. It was clear, even from this early stage, that the book had many secrets to reveal. And here Reviel talks about his early impressions, having studied the partially disbound manuscript. The big question that everybody wanted to know was whether there was more to discover in the book than had already been discovered by the great Johan Ludvig Heiberg, 100 years earlier.
Nigel Wilson and Reviel Netz have been the principle scholars working on the Archimedes text, and in 2004 Nigel Wilson wrote an article outlining progress on the project in general. Click here to read that article. In August 2008 Netz and Wilson completed a transcription of all the Archimedes texts in the manuscript. Three learned articles on the Archimedes Texts in the Palimpsest have been published in the Journal SCIAMVS, and they are listed in the Bibliography on this section of the website. The Journal Sciamvs does not have a very wide circulation, but you can order back copies of the journal for about $55 ($41, for each of vols. 1-4, shipping cost included) by following this link: http://www.sciamvs.org or directly writing to: sciamvs@sciamvs.org. These articles are difficult reads. If you want a general sense of what is going on:
Click here to read Reviel Netz on the importance of the palimpsest in general
Click here to read Reviel Netz on the Floating Bodies text in the manuscript
Click here to read Reviel Netz on Archimedes, his Method, and Infinity
Click here to read Reviel Netz on Archimedes, his Stomachion, and combinatorics
However, as it turns out, there is much more to the Archimedes Palimpsest than the Archimedes texts. Other unique texts from the ancient world have been found in the book, and these finds are of quite extraordinary importance.
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