Fibonacci's ‘Liber Abaci’. Edition and Researches

In order to offer a modern scientific and widely accessible edition of Fibonacci’s well-known treatise ‘Liber Abaci’, it is necessary to operate in at least three different directives. These directives can be identified in the linguistic-philological, in the historical-mathematical and in the computer approach: through their synergy, it will be possible to realize the following purposes: 1) to establish for the first time a reliable critical text of the ‘Liber Abaci’, as close as possible to its original; 2) to place it, in the light of all the most recent historical and scientific acquisitions, in the cultural context where it was produced; 3) to provide it with a commentary that will smooth out the main difficulties of interpretation; 4) to make it accessible to a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists also through all the tools that are now available by the computer science and the digital resources. The first and, at least partially, the second directives, i.e. the linguistic-philological one and the historical-mathematical one, which are properly the founding phases of a modern scientific edition of Fibonacci’s ‘Liber Abaci’, embody the object of the present project. It serves primarily the purposes of comparing all the manuscript witnesses which transmitted Fibonacci’s work, of determining their mutual relationships and, finally, of establishing a reliable critical text, on which could be grounded a translation in a modern language of culture, an essential commentary and every subsequent investigation of historical - cultural character.