The UNESCO Memory of the World Register is similar to the UN organisation's World Heritage programme, but it is not about buildings, rather about the world's most important documents, said MTAK director Gábor Náray-Szabó. The inclusion of the book in the register is very important for Hungary and for Hungarian culture, he added.
The Hungarian Memory of the World Register Committee nominated Appendix in 2007, and the Memory of the World Committee informed the Hungarian committee officially of the book's inclusion on the list on January 9.
"Appendix is an outstanding document in the history of mathematics and human culture. It presents the solution of a more than two thousand year old problem in connection with parallel lines and the description of János Bolyai's discovery of non-Euclidean and the more general absolute geometries. Non-Euclidean geometry changed our thinking not only about geometry, but mathematics, in general, and paved the way for the creation of the modern physical theories of the twentieth century," UNESCO says of Appendix on its website.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
