Scientific Heritage

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was a brilliant Renaissance figure. His contemporaries regarded him as a talented painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor, and musician. Leonardo’s scientific research and discoveries became known and were published much later. Their systematic study began only in the second half of the 19th century and became a truly international undertaking.This edition is based on publications of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts devoted to his great inventions and reflections on physics and mathematics, astronomy and geology, botany and anatomy. The book contains long-unpublished material illustrated by numerous drawings by the author himself.In Russia and abroad, V. P. Zubov (1900–1963) is rightly considered one of the leading scholars of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific works. Zubov was an outstanding Russian scientist, philosopher, and historian of science and architecture. He was the first to translate Leonardo’s scientific works into Russian, systematize fragmentary notes from his notebooks scattered among museums and private collections in various countries, and provide them with commentary, a bibliography, and an introductory article.