Such is the power of Leonardo that he even drags his friends into the news pages. Today a whole page of the Guardian was devoted to the "discovery" of a manuscript by Leonardo's colleague, the mathematician Luca Pacioli. Known in the history of mathematics as a clever and influential compiler rather than original thinker, Pacioli's chief claim to public fame is his publication of double-entry bookkeeping.
In Lucy McDonald's sprightly account, the "new" manuscript, De viribus quantitatis (On the Powers of Numbers), is said to have "languished in the archives of the University of Bologna". Its rediscovery is credited to David Singmaster, a mathematician best known for his publications on Rubik's cube.
Singmaster hails the manuscript as "the foundation not only of modern magic but of numerical puzzles too". Much of the public interest arises from Pacioli's asides about his friend Leonardo, who had devised the illustrations of the geometric solids for Luca's De divina proportione.
While it's good to see Pacioli starring in the Guardian, not least in the grand portrait by Jacopo de' Barbari, the "discovery" is not all it seems.
Since 1997 a printed copy of De viribus quantitatis has been sitting among the renaissance source material in my office, as it has on the shelves of every major academic library. It was published by the late Leonardo scholar Augusto Marinoni under the auspices of the Ente Raccolta Vinciana, the specialist Leonardo research organisation based in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. It was transcribed from the Bologna manuscript by Maria Garlaschi Pierani.
The significance of the manuscript for Leonardo has long since been noted by Carlo Pedretti, and it appears in Singmaster's 1996 chronology of sources for recreational mathematics:. It was clearly described in the 18-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970-90) and it was known to Michele Emmer writing in the journal Leonardo in 1982 - and so on.
My purpose in raising all this is less to indulge in one of those tiresome arguments about academic priority than to question the kind of motives that now too often result in hyped "discoveries" in all areas of academia.
The exigencies of finance frequently lie behind the stories. In this case, the backing came from William Kalsch, founder of the Conjuring Arts Research Centre in New York. Backers, particularly from the private sector, generally seek prominent results. Researchers are not immune from the quest for celebrity.
Thus we get the hyped press release, making claims that may not be totally fraudulent but are certainly highly misleading. And the poor journalist, who can hardly be expected to research the bibliographical history of an obscure renaissance manuscript, is handed what looks like a good story that presents an opportunity to command a prominent position in the newspaper.
In Pacioli's case, no damage has been done. But we see the same mechanisms at work repeatedly, not least in big science. My message is never to take stories of "discovery" at face value. "Disinterested" academic research is now all too often permeated by covert interests.
