PII: 0315-0860(82)90129-X


HM 9 Projects 343 

PROJECTS 

This department welcomes brief notes and article-length 
manuscripts. The former may include announcements of contem- 
plated or ongoing projects, information on doctoral theses in 
progress or completed (writer, title, institution, supervisor, 
and available information on completion time), proposals and 
questions, and requests for assistance. Announcements of indi- 
vidual research projects, including theses, are very important 
to avoid awkward and wasteful duplication of effort. Articles 
will ordinarily describe projected, in progress, or completed 
large-scale projects involving one or several scholars and 
should follow the same standards as other articles. 

A MATHEMATICAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE XIV CENTURY 

Dr. B. Piochi (Institue of Mathematics of the University of 
Siena, Italy) is transcribing Paolo dell'Abbaco's "Trattato di 
tutta l'arte dell'abacho" from the copy in the National Library 
in Florence. Eight more copies of this treatise are known: 
six are in Italian libraries, one is in the United States (in 
the Plimpton Collection), and one is in France (in the National 
Library in Paris [Van Egmont 1981, Practical Mathematics in the 
Italian Renaissance, p. 365, Florence]). However, the copy in 
the Florentine Library seems to be the original, or at least 
the oldest, one. 

The manuscript consists of 188 charts; it contains arith- 
metical tables and operations; business, recreational, and geo- 
metrical problems; astronomical tables and a dissertation on 
astrology. 

Dr. Piochi, who expects to transcribe and edit the entire 
treatise, is preparing a paper containing a description of the 
treatise, a commentary, and a collation of its different copies. 

0315-0860/82/030343-01$02.00/O 
Copyright 0 1982 by Academic Press, Inc. 

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.