Cyclometrica Elementa Duo : the story of a hidden treasure

09 Dec 2010

As part of our ongoing work preparing for the move into the Sammy Ofer Wing, I was recently working with the collection of Vice-Admiral Sir William Hannam Henderson (1845-1931). These papers were arranged by Admiral Henderson himself and were presented to the Museum by his daughter, Mrs L.C. Dunne, in two installments in 1951 and 1955. They consist of several official service documents, a logbook, personal notebooks and letters dating from his schooldays to his death. There are also several scrapbooks, photograph albums and news cuttings, dating from 1847 to 1931.

Among his papers I came across an uncatalogued buried treasure, a book titled Cyclometrica Elementa Duo. It was written by Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) the famous French philologist and historian whose works on chronology were among the greatest contributions of Renaissance scholars to revisions in historical and classical studies. Scaliger was a flourishing author whose many works were published in numerous different languages. Even between 2000-2005 an essay about him was published and four of his publications were reprinted posthumously.

The text of the Cyclometrica Elementa Duo (HEN/29/2) is chiefly in Latin; however, definitions, axioms, and propositions are in Greek. It was published in 1594 when Scaliger was a leading Leiden professor. In this very work it was claimed that p was equal to v10. The book has now been made available through the Archive catalogue and can be requested for viewing in the Caird Library.

Gregory (Library Assistant)