Scientists to reassemble Maimonides' works

Scientists at a British university hope to use digital technology in reassembling some 300,000 tiny fragments of an 800-year-old Jewish philosopher's oeuvre.

The University of Manchester's Center for Jewish Studies is reassembling the life works of Moses Maimonides, a scholar and writer whose findings were hugely influential on modern Judaic thought.

A British government grant of $670,000 will fund the center's use of digital imaging software, a crucial aid in piecing the hundreds of documents back together.

Maimonides worked as a physician, lawyer and scientist in the Middle Ages, project leader Philip Alexander said. His writings were obtained from a medieval document storeroom — called a "genizah" — discovered in a Cairo synagogue.