Maths goes digital

A digital edition of the oldest surviving manuscript of Euclid’s Elements, the founding document of Mathematics, will now be available to the public on the internet. The manuscript has been displayed in the Bodleian Library since 1804. When asked whether such developments may result in fewer visitors, Martin Kauffman, a curator at the Bodleian said “for rare things, digitisation is unlikely to make a dramatic difference to visitor numbers, and could even help to whip up interest.”ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005