Dr. William Noel - Tuesday February 28, 2012
Science Complex Atrium, University of Guelph at 7pm
The subject of this lecture is a manuscript of extraordinary importance to the history of science, the Archimedes Palimpsest. This thirteenth century prayer book contains erased texts that were written several centuries earlier still. These erased texts include two treatises by Archimedes that can be found nowhere else, The Method and Stomachion. The manuscript sold at auction to a private collector on the 29th October 1998. The owner deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, a few months later. Since that date the manuscript has been the subject of conservation, imaging and scholarship, in order to better read the texts. The Archimedes Palimpsest project, as it is called, has shed new light on Archimedes and revealed new texts from the ancient world. These new texts include speeches by an Athenian orator from the fourth century B.C. called Hyperides, and a third century A.D. commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. The project, which is in its twelfth year, has generated a great deal of public curiosity, as well as the interest of scholars throughout the world. All the raw imaging data, as well as transcriptions of the unique texts in the manuscript have been published on the web. William Noel was the Project’s director, and he will give an account of the history of the book and the project, and discuss its discoveries.
Dr. William Noel, is Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, a position he took up in 1997. He received his Ph.D in 1993 from Cambridge University England. Among the positions he has held are Director of Studies in the History of Art, Downing College, Cambridge University, and Assistant Curator of Manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Will Noel is the author of The Harley Psalter, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology Vol. 4, Cambridge University Press 1995, a detailed investigation into the making of an illustrated eleventh-century Psalter, and the author of "The Oxford Bible Pictures" Facsimile Verlag, Luzern and The Walters Art Museum, 2004 which concerns a series of English miniatures of the thirteenth century in The Walters Art Museum. He is also co-editor and contributor to an exhibition catalogue: The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, London, 1996. In 2002, together with Professor Daniel Weiss and Dr. Griffith Mann, he curated an exhibition entitled "The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible" at The Walters Art Museum. Since January 1999, Dr. Noel has directed an international program to conserve, image and study the Archimedes Palimpsest, the unique source for three treatise by the ancient Greek mathematician (www.archimedespalimpsest.org). 
He has co-written a popular account of the project, entitled "The Archimedes Codes", together with Professor Reviel Netz, published by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson (2007). He is the Curator of the exhibition: Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes". Dr. Noel was the principal grant writer for two successful applications to the NEH to create full digital surrogates of The Walters holdings of illuminated Islamic, English, Dutch, Central European, Armenian, Byzantine and Ethiopian manuscripts. Dr. Noel has taught and lectured widely. He is on the Faculty of the Rare Book School, University of Virginia, and he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art History, John Hopkins University. Will likes reading and sailing.
