Launch of Reading Euclid Exhibition at the Russell Library

Title page of Euclidis Elementorum Libre XV. Accessit Liber XVI. Christopher Clavius, Rome, 1603
Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - 17:00
Russell Library

 Launch of 'Reading Euclid: Examining the key mathematical text through an exhibition at the Russell Library'

Please RSVP to library.bookings@mu.ie before Monday, 25th June

An exhibition of pre-1700 copies of Euclid's Elements and related texts will launch in the Russell Library on Wednesday the 27th of June at 17:00. This exhibition will run until the end of July, and is part of of Reading Euclid: Euclid's Elements of Geometry in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. 

Euclid's Elements is widely considered one of the most influential works ever written, and has played a key role in education for over 2000 years. This exhibition is an opportunity to view some of the remarkable copies in the St. Patrick's College Maynooth collection, housed in the Russell Library.

The exhibition will be launched by Professor Philip Nolan, President of Maynooth University and Rev. Prof. Michael Mullaney, President of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.  Dr Philip Beeley, University of Oxford, will briefly mention of the discoveries he has made while studying these texts in the Russell Library.  Dr Beeley, the 2018 Huxley Lecturer, is part of the Reading Euclid project team and is particularly interested in evidence, such as notation, which sheds some light on how these books were used. A sample of such notation can be seen in the image below:
 

 Example of notation in Operum Mathematicorum Tonus Quintus. Christopher Clavius, Mainz, 1612.

Example of notation in Operum Mathematicorum Tonus Quintus. Christopher Clavius, Mainz, 1612.

This exhibition is curated by Dr Ciarán Mac an Bhaird, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and Barbara McCormack, Special Collections & Archives: Russell Library and John Paul II Library.