Until now, says Netz (classics, Stanford U.) there has been no full translation of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes' (d. 212 BC) work into English, only paraphrases and summaries. He offers the first, along with a critical edition of diagrams designed to reconstruct the earliest form recoverable from the manuscripts; evidence from the Archimedes Palimpsest, which was lost from 1915 to 1998; and the ancient commentaries of Eutocius on the two books. The goal is to provide historians in general and historians of mathematics in particular with a text that can be studied from historical and rhetorical perspectives. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The works translated here--the two books On the Sphere and Cylinder--were a source of great pride for Archimedes, the greatest scientist of antiquity. Accompanying this translation is the first scientific edition of the diagrams, which incorporates new information from the recently discovered Archimedes Palimpsest. The volume also includes the first English translation of Eutocius's commentary. Reviel Netz's commentary analyzes Archimedes's work from contemporary research perspectives such as scientific style and the cognitive history of mathematical texts.
Volume I of the first authoritative translation of Archimedes' works into English.
