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VERSION:2.0
PRODID:icalendar-ruby
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:Alexander Jones\, "Recovering a lost work by Ptolemy from a me
 dieval palimpsest"
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Pacific Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261006T030939Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_45492814367219
DTSTART:20240301T200000Z
DTEND:20240301T210000Z
DESCRIPTION:Talk description: An 8th-century codex in the Ambrosian Library
 \, Milan has been known since the early 19th century to contain thirteen p
 alimpsest pages reused from one or more manuscripts of Greek scientific te
 xts. Working with multispectral imaging\, Victor Gysembergh\, Emanuel Zing
 g\, and I have succeeded in transcribing much of twelve particularly diffi
 cult pages whose contents had not previously been identified. They turn ou
 t to preserve substantial parts of a hitherto unknown treatise by Claudius
  Ptolemy (2nd century CE) on an astronomical instrument of his own devisin
 g\, the "Meteoroscope." In this talk I will discuss the manuscript and its
  challenges\, as well as what we are learning about the Meteoroscope and i
 ts uses.\n\nShort bio: Alexander Jones is Professor of the History of the 
 Exact Sciences in Antiquity at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancien
 t World. His research centers on the astral sciences (astronomy and astrol
 ogy) of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods\, encompassing observat
 ional and theoretical aspects as well as the public face of science. He ha
 s studied and edited hundreds of papyri with astronomical contents\, most 
 notably in his volume of Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus\, which expo
 sed for the first time the range of astronomical practices and resources o
 f the astrologers of Roman Egypt and revealed how extensively this traditi
 on was indebted to Babylonian astronomy. He has also worked with epigraphi
 c sources and material culture\, including leadership of the Antikythera M
 echanism Research Project's publication of the first comprehensive and acc
 urate editions of the texts inscribed on and inside the Mechanism's fragme
 nts. His 2017 book A Portable Cosmos presents a broad and accessible accou
 nt of the Mechanism in the light of recent research and in the broader con
 text of ancient astronomy and Greco-Roman society. Ptolemy constitutes a t
 hird focus of Jones's interest\, and next year he hopes to complete a mono
 graph that will situate Ptolemy's astronomical works within his larger pro
 gram of writing on the gamut of the mathematical and physical sciences.\n\
 nThis talk will not be available on zoom and will not be recorded.
GEO:37.427985;-122.170551
LOCATION:Building 110\, 112
SUMMARY:Alexander Jones\, "Recovering a lost work by Ptolemy from a medieva
 l palimpsest"
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.stanford.edu/event/alexander_jones_talk_detail
 s_coming_soon
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