Archimedes Brought to Light

Just over 100 years ago in the summer of 1906, a Danish scholar called Johan Ludvig Heiberg travelled to the famous Metochion library of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Constantinople. He had got wind of an intriguing medieval prayer book that had recently been found at the library, and which contained a series of Christian prayers written on parchment recycled from older books. But underneath the scrawlings of a 13th-century medieval monk, the battered manuscript also appeared to contain some strange Greek writing as well as mysterious drawings and mathematical symbols. When Heiberg saw the book, he soon realized that the hidden material in fact contained the thoughts of Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC) – one of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world.