Author Owen Gingerich has raised questions about the AP account of the theft of a sixteenth-century astronomy book by Petrus Apianus (which I commented on yesterday).
Gingerich writes "Note that there is something very fishy about this AP story. The Astronomicum Caesareum was published in 1540 and is worth about £200,000. Apianus' Cosmographia of 1533 is worth £20,000 by a stretch. I made a special trip to Kremsmunster hoping to see a Copernicus once reported there, but got a very chilly reception. Had I suspected there was an Astronomicum Caesareum there, I would have collated it and thus had a detailed description of the volume, if that is really what they had and had loaned to the Peuerbach exhibition."
Exactly what volume was stolen from Peuerbach seems to be up in the air; I wondered about the date (and commented as I did only because there was an OCLC record for a 1532 edition as reported), but I'll leave it to the experts to figure this one out. Hopefully it will resolve itself soon, and I'll update this as I can.
