PII: 0315-0860(82)90015-5


228 Projects HM 9 

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 RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPT IN PRACTICAL MATHEMATICS 

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

The manuscript contains--in 188 charts--arithmetical tables 
and operations; business, recreational, and geometrical 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 
manuscript, a commentary, and a collation of its different 
copies. 

0315-0860/82/020228-01$02.00/O 
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