William Noel (archivist)
British archivist and medievalist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Noel (August 1, 1965 - April 29, 2024) was a British archivist. He was an authority on medieval manuscripts.[1]
Early life and education
Noel was born in the United Kingdom.[2] He received a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Cambridge.[3][2]
Career
After receiving his PhD, Noel became the curator of rare books at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. At the museum, he led a project to digitize medieval manuscripts and make them freely available to the public.[3]
Noel founded and directed the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at UPenn. There, he developed OPenn, an online portal for collections of various departments at Penn.[4]
Noel led the Archimedes Palimpsest Project using multispectral and x‑ray imaging to recover erased text from the lost works of Archimedes, including The Method and Stomachion.[5]
In 2007, Noel co-authored with Reviel Netz The Archimedes Codex, an exploration of the history of the discovery of the Archimedes Palimpsest and their role in deciphering it.[6][7]
In 2020, Noel was appointed the Associate University Librarian for Special Collections at Princeton University.[4]
Awards and honors
The Archimedes Codex was awarded the Neumann Prize of the British Society for the History of Mathematics.[8]
In 2013, Noel was named a White House Open Science Champion of Change.[9]
Personal life
Noel died on April 29, 2024, in Edinburgh after being struck by a van.[4]
