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Descartes letter returned to French libraryTuesday, June 8, 2010   A letter of French philosopher Rene Descartes is seen at the Institut de France, in Paris, Tuesday June 8, 2010. The long-lost letter, stolen in the 1800s, was rediscovered in the Haverford College library in Pennsylvania USA. Originally part of the collection of the Institut de France, this correspondence along with thousands of other letters and documents were stolen by Count Guglielmo Libri (1803–1869), professor of mathematics at the Collège de France and secretary of the Committee for the General Catalogue of Manuscripts in French public libraries. In 1850, Libri was sentenced in absentia for several robberies, including that of the Descartes letters, but he had fled to England and sold the documents to collectors and booksellers. (06-08) 11:24 PDT PARIS, France (AP) -- A letter by 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes that languished unnoticed in a U.S. college library for more than a century has been restored to France. The president of Haverford College — which has had the letter since 1902 — handed over the plastic-covered missive at a ceremony Tuesday at Paris' Institut de France. The 1641 letter had been donated to Haverford, near Philadelphia, by the widow of an alumnus and remained in the college library, unnoticed by scholars, until a librarian posted about its existence online last fall. The letter turned out to be one of thousands pilfered from French libraries in the 1800s. Haverford officials volunteered to return the stolen letter. Descartes penned the words, "I think, therefore I am." |
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