---
created_at: '2016-08-10T00:26:16.000Z'
title: A Prayer for Archimedes (2007)
url: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes
author: signa11
points: 87
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 33
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1470788776
_tags:
- story
- author_signa11
- story_12258673
objectID: '12258673'
year: 2007

---
For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in
France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed
parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and
waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters
marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing
into the spine.