Post #3627203

2026-07-06 11:52 UTC

“Mathematician Laurence Sigler had made it his mission to translate [Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci], rushing to complete the task right before he died of lymphocytic leukemia in 1997. But his editor moved on, and the manuscript languished on floppy disks for years. For a while Sigler’s widow Judith Sigler Fell, fearing the project would be killed, took the extraordinary step of impersonating her husband in communiqués. By the time Fell found a new publisher, Springer Verlag (now part of the same publisher as Nature), floppy disks had been superseded and she had to hire a hacker to extract the files. Fell then discovered that Springer only accepted submissions in TEX format, the technical standard for physics and mathematics texts. She learned it and spent six months retyping the text. Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci was finally published in 2002 — the 800th anniversary of the book’s first appearance.” https://blogs.nature.com/aviewfromthebridge/2017/04/20/fibonaccis-mathematical-legacy/

Replies (4)

@oddhack@mstdn.social 2026-07-06 13:26

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz once again women do the gruntwork that enables the research. I am glad she followed up and Sigler may have been a committed feminist for all I know, but the pattern leaped out at me.

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@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk@mastodon.social 2026-07-06 13:48

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz that is an absolutely beautiful love story.

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@johnlogic@sfba.social 2026-07-06 14:49

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz Fibonacci's Liber Abaci Translated by Laurence Sigler and set in TeX by Judith Sigler Fell, with annotation by Newsome https://www.mifami.org/eLibrary/Fibonacci-LiberAbaci-QuadClass-2pp.pdf #mathematics

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@oldclumsy_nowmad@mastodon.social 2026-07-06 15:28

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz I'm thankful we've moved beyond those dowdy old days when you learned to write and then those skills would let you communicate a century later, or at least two whole weeks after the newest "revolutionary advance". Wouldn't it be horrible if someone could still read what you write today, even after 4,000 years? As if you were scratching, chiseling or painting on a rock? Depressing that those poor ochre-grinders weren't smart enough to monopolize communication and get rich.

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