Œuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens

Abstract

THIS volume is the second one which contains reprints of published writings of Huygens, the ten first volumes having been devoted to his correspondence. During the years 1652 to 1656 Huygens had still to divide his attention between his scientific work and the study of law, but the extracts from his note-books given in this volume show how little the law was able to fill his mind. In January, 1652, he began to occupy himself with various geometrical problems leading to equations of the second or third degree, of most of which he gave solutions in his “Hlustrium quorundam Problematum Constructiones,” which came out in 1654 as an appendix to his work on the quadrature of the circle. Both the rough work and the printed essay are reproduced in the present volume, and it is interesting to follow the stages by which he succeeded in submitting problems to algebraical analysis which Archimedes, Nicomedes, and other Greek mathematicians had treated by pure geometry.

Œuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens.

Publiées par la Société Hollandaise des Sciences. Tome douzième, Travaux de Mathématiques pures 1652–1656. Pp. vi + 296. (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1910.)