4-21-8. Thomas Craig to H. Poincaré

Dec. 24 1884

American Journal of Mathematics

Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore

Dear Monsieur Poincaré,

Your letter and memoir have both been received, and the memoir is now in the hands of the printer – it will appear in Vol. 7 No. 3 of the Journal.11endnote: 1 See Poincaré (1885), the manuscript of which Poincaré dated 10 November, 1884. As Poincaré observed in his introduction, the topic of his paper stems from considerations introduced in the then-unpublished memoir submitted for the Grand prix des sciences mathématiques in June of 1880 (Poincaré, 1923), as well as from an unpublished lecture delivered before the Société mathématique de France in November 1882, and a note published in the Comptes rendus (Poincaré, 1883). In the prize paper, Poincaré developed from scratch a form of the Laplace Transform, which he later mistakenly ascribed to Bessel, before correctly crediting Laplace, in a note added to the final page. The latter note must have been added sometime after this letter was sent and before the press run in March, 1885. The reedition of the AJM paper by Jules Drach in Volume 1 of the Œuvres (Appell and Drach, 1928, 225–289) silently corrects Poincaré’s error, as observed by Deakin (1982). In this roundabout fashion, Poincaré was led to write of the “transformation de Laplace”, the theory of which he extended, thanks to the “recent progress in our knowledge of imaginary variables” (Poincaré, 1885, 258). I thank you very much both for the memoir and the copy of your paper “Sur la réduction des Intégrales Abéliennes”.22endnote: 2 Poincaré (1884). I shall take every care in the correcting of your proofs.

Each author receives gratuitously 25 reprints of his paper, do you care to receive more than that number, if you do please inform me at once, there is a slight charge for any number over 25 depending on the length of the memoir. Hoping to hear from you soon,

I am

Yours faithfully,

Thomas Craig

ALS 2p. Collection particulière, Paris 75017.

Time-stamp: " 9.06.2022 21:27"

Notes

  • 1 See Poincaré (1885), the manuscript of which Poincaré dated 10 November, 1884. As Poincaré observed in his introduction, the topic of his paper stems from considerations introduced in the then-unpublished memoir submitted for the Grand prix des sciences mathématiques in June of 1880 (Poincaré, 1923), as well as from an unpublished lecture delivered before the Société mathématique de France in November 1882, and a note published in the Comptes rendus (Poincaré, 1883). In the prize paper, Poincaré developed from scratch a form of the Laplace Transform, which he later mistakenly ascribed to Bessel, before correctly crediting Laplace, in a note added to the final page. The latter note must have been added sometime after this letter was sent and before the press run in March, 1885. The reedition of the AJM paper by Jules Drach in Volume 1 of the Œuvres (Appell and Drach, 1928, 225–289) silently corrects Poincaré’s error, as observed by Deakin (1982). In this roundabout fashion, Poincaré was led to write of the “transformation de Laplace”, the theory of which he extended, thanks to the “recent progress in our knowledge of imaginary variables” (Poincaré, 1885, 258).
  • 2 Poincaré (1884).

References

  • P. Appell and J. Drach (Eds.) (1928) Œuvres d’Henri Poincaré, Volume 1. Gauthier-Villars, Paris. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • M. A. B. Deakin (1982) The development of the Laplace transform, 1737–1937, II: Poincaré to Doetsch, 1880–1937. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 26 (4), pp. 351–381. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1883) Sur les séries des polynômes. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences de Paris 96 (10), pp. 637–639. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1884) Sur la réduction des intégrales abéliennes. Bulletin de la Société mathématique de France 12, pp. 124–143. link1 Cited by: endnote 2.
  • H. Poincaré (1885) Sur les équations linéaires aux différentielles ordinaires et aux différences finies. American Journal of Mathematics 7 (3), pp. 203–258. link1, link2 Cited by: endnote 1.
  • H. Poincaré (1923) Extrait d’un mémoire inédit de Henri Poincaré sur les fonctions fuchsiennes. Acta mathematica 39, pp. 58–93. link1 Cited by: endnote 1.