Renowned Scholar, Princeton U Librarian Dies In Scotland Crash

PRINCETON, NJ – William Noel, a Princeton University Librarian and champion of open data and information accessibility died in a crash in Scotland. Noel was 58.

On April 10, Noel was walking when he was struck by a van in Edinburgh, he was taken to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, where he died from his injuries on April 29, according to Police Scotland.

A nurse helped Noel but left before police could arrive on the scene. She later helped the authorities in the investigation. The 40-year-old van driver was arrested and released pending further investigation, police said.

Noel lived in Philadelphia and was the John T. Maltsberger III’ 55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections in the Princeton University Library.

He was raised in England and was an authority on medieval manuscripts. He was a leading figure among institutional librarians and led many projects to digitize and data mine pre-modern manuscripts. He worked tirelessly to put large amounts of information online to make knowledge accessible to the public.

He also served as the Chair of the Philadelphia Consortium of Special Collections Libraries.

Noel studied at the University of Cambridge. He graduated from Downing College, and went on to complete his PhD, graduating in 1992.

“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,” The University’s Department of Art History said in a statement.

“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.”

Before coming to Princeton, Noel served as Associate Vice Provost for External Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania and as UPenn’s library director of rare collections and manuscripts.

He also did a stint as the curator of manuscripts and rare books at The Walter Art Museum in Baltimore and as assistant curator of manuscripts at The J.Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

One of Noel’s most notable contributions was to the Archimedes Palimpsest project, where he worked with a group of scholars to bring back Greek mathematician Archimedes’ handwriting which was found in a 13th-century Byzantine prayer book. The project is now available online.

Noel spoke about the project in his Ted Talk back in 2012. He highlighted the effort it took to reveal the handwriting that was buried beneath other medieval text and the decision to release it without copyright restrictions.

After his Ted Talk he was honored as a Champion of Change by the Obama administration.

His death is still under investigation, authorities in Scotland said.

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