By Tim Binnall
A Galileo manuscript that had been treasured by the University of Michigan has been revealed to be a forgery that went undetected for over 80 years. The dubious document reportedly featured what was thought to have been the draft of a letter written by the famed astronomer as well as historic notes wherein he documented moons orbiting Jupiter, which was the first time such a celestial observation had ever been made. Since 1938, the manuscript was considered a prized piece of the University of Michigan Library's collection, until this past May when a historian contacted the institution to inform them that he had serious concerns about its authenticity.
While working on a Galileo biography, Georgia State University's Nick Wilding spotted the letter on the library's website and quickly became suspicious by the fact that both parts of the manuscript appeared to be written with the same ink. "It just kind of jumps out as weird," he explained to the New York Times, "this is supposedly two different documents that happen to be on one sheet of paper. Why is it all exactly the same color brown?" His interest piqued, Wilding set about trying to determine if the manuscript was genuine and he found that the paper possessed a watermark which allowed its creation to be traced back to around 150 years after Galileo had purportedly written the document.
Additionally, when Wilding looked into the chain of custody which led to the manuscript becoming a part of the library's collection, he learned that there was no account of the document prior to 1930, which was rather worrisome since all of the astronomer's written material had been exhaustively cataloged in prior years. The proverbial coup de grâce came when the historian discovered that the piece had been authenticated in 1934 by an Archbishop Maffi, who was convinced that it was real after comparing it to two Galileo letters that he personally owned. However, it turned out that those documents were later revealed to be the work of an infamous forger named Tobia Nicotra.
As such, Wilding concluded that the manuscript was yet another fake that had been created by Nicotra, who served two years in prison back in the 1930s after he was busted fabricated such historic material. Upon receiving the historian's tip, the University of Michigan Library conducted their own investigation and agreed with his assessment, announcing last week that the document, which had once been "one of the jewels" of their collection was actually phony. Expressing gratitude to Wilding for spotting the fraud, the institution indicated that they plan to reassess the document's place in their collection, while also noting that it has newfound value as far as a research tool "in the arena of fakes, forgeries, and hoaxes."