Tributes have been paid to a renowned US scholar who died in a road traffic collision in Edinburgh.
Dr William Noel was struck by a van while walking on Trinity Crescent in the capital on Wednesday, April 10.
The 58-year-old was taken to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he died of his injuries on Monday, April 29.
The driver of the van, a 40-year-old man, was arrested and released pending further inquiries.
We are deeply saddened by the death of our friend and colleague, Dr William Noel. A brilliant scholar, his 2019 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography @theUL, were sensational: https://t.co/ky2AX29EbX. Our condolences to Will's family and friends.
— Cambridge University Library (@theUL) May 1, 2024
Dr Noel was the John T. Maltsberger III ’55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections in Princeton University Library, and Chair of the Philadelphia Consortium of Special Collections Libraries.
Professor Paul Binski, a British art historian and Emeritus Professor of the History of Medieval Art at the University of Cambridge, paid tribute to Dr Noel, writing: "Though a scholar of note, Will was in the forefront of digital humanities.
"He is most closely associated with the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, published as The Archimedes Codex in 2007 with the classicist Reviel Netz, which took the latest technology to decipher a lost work of Archimedes hidden beneath a later medieval text rediscovered in 1998.
"Will was an energetic and charming force for manuscript studies with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and his death has been greeted with dismay by the medievalist community.
"He was one of the first undergraduate students of the author of this brief memoir, a valued friend and a continuator of Cambridge’s tradition of medieval manuscript study."
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