Descartesbrev åter

Lite mer Descartes: ett stulet brev av filosofen har dykt upp på ett college i Pennsylvania, skriver New York Times. Brevet stals ursprungligen av italienske matematikern Guglielmo Libris, på 1840:

The letters were among thousands of documents stolen by Guglielmo Libri, an Italian count and mathematician who served as secretary of the Committee for the General Catalog of Manuscripts in French Public Libraries in the 1840s. After learning that he might be arrested, Libri fled to London in 1848 with a collection of 30,000 books and manuscripts, including those by Descartes, Galileo, Fermat, Leibniz, Copernicus and Kepler and other scientific and mathematical giants. 

Claiming to be a political refugee, Libri was welcomed in Britain even though French courts eventually convicted him in absentia in 1850 and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Libri raised money by selling his collection, and put a total of 7,628 lots up for sale at two auctions in 1861.