Science & technology | The Archimedes palimpsest

Eureka!

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SCIENCE is a forward-looking subject. Its practitioners, even those who study the science of the past, frequently have little interest in the discipline's history. But science is such a strange activity that its roots are worth investigating. So it seems only appropriate that some of the most modern scientific techniques available are being applied to the most ancient known manuscript of the work of one of the subject's founding fathers, Archimedes of Syracuse.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Eureka!”

Is he ready?

From the July 29th 2000 edition

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