I visited the Walters last week to see the exhibit, so I can report that the
"Euclid" referred to here is a copy of one of the Ratdolt editions of the
Latin translation by Campanus, printed between 1482 and 1491. I don't recall
which of these printings is the one on display there. According to Heath,
Ratdolt's Euclid is "the first printed mathematical book of any importance".
I recall seeing a Ratdolt Euclid at the Smithsonian library in Washington two
summers ago as part of the Institute for the History of Mathematics and its
Teaching run by Fred Rickey, Victor Katz, and Steve Schot, but I suspect the
copy at the Walters is not the same book. I had the same exhilirating
experience in Baltimore, however, in seeing the wonderful diagrams on the
opening page (Definitions in Book 1) and being able to easily read the text,
despite the fact that it was written in an often abbreviated Latin.
By the way, my visit was a testament to a fascination with the story of the
Archimedes Palimpsest. I was on the East Coast to attend a conference in
Philadelphia, and abandoned the conference for a full afternoon (in this case,
a hard decision to make, as there were quite a few things of interest there
for me) to rent a car for the special purpose of driving nearly 2 hours into
Baltimore and another 2 hours back, just to see the manuscript! It was not a
disappointment.
There is a video that accompanies the exhibit that explains the story of the
manuscript. Two characters in the video are--I assume--Nigel Wilson, who will
be preparing a scholarly edition of the ms., and Reviel Netz, who commented on
its importance. It was also a treat to identify the back of Fred Rickey's
head in the brief shots that were shown of the auction at Christie's from last
October.
Danny
Daniel E. Otero
Xavier University
Cincinnati, OH