With apologies to Samuel Johnson: It
is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather
driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good ; to be
exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or
punished by neglect, where success would have been without applause, and
diligence without reward. Among these unhappy mortals is the translator of
Latin mathematical works of days gone by; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science,
the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions
from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and
glory, without a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress.
Every other author may aspire to praise; the translator can only hope to escape
reproach, and even this negative recompense has been granted to a very few....
General Introduction : The
State of this Site Sept. 2013: Annual Report.
However, not withstanding the similarities of the present
task with Dr. Johnson's remarks about compiling his dictionary, it is pleasing
to note that for this website, around 3500 visits and 50,000 hits are made on a
monthly basis, and that around 25,000 files are downloaded monthly to
mathematicians and students of mathematics in around 150 countries, of which
the U.S. accounts for approximately a quarter or more, on a regular basis.
There is, of course, some seasonal variation depending on semester demand. But,
storm clouds lie on the horizon :
The most
popular files downloaded recently not in order have been Euler's Integration
PREFACE
This
site is produced, funded, and managed by myself, Dr. Ian Bruce, now an
independent researcher or should I say mathematical hobbyist, whose aim is to
provide the modern mathematical reader with a snapshot of that wonderful
period, from roughly the year 1600 to 1750 or so, when modern analytical
methods came into being, and an understanding of the physical world was
produced hand-in-hand with this development. The work is an ongoing process :
translations of Euler's Mechanica , and his Tractus de Motu Corporum
Rigidorum.....are given, as well as his integral and differential calculus
textbooks and his Introductio in analysin…. and Methodus
Inveniendi Lineas Curvas Maximi Minimive Gaudentes. Work on Newton's
Principia has been completed some 18 months now ; this includes notes by the
Jesuit brothers Leseur & Jacquier from their annotated edition, and by
myself, as well as ideas from the books by Chandrasekhar, Brougham & Rouse,
etc . The traditional translates of the
Principia do not give extensive notes, if any at all. Some of
Occasionally people
send e-mails concerning things they are not happy about in the text, and their
suggestions may be put in place, if they have a point. If you feel that there
is something wrong somewhere, or if you think that further clarification on
some point can be provided, please get
in touch via the e-mail hyperlink. The amount of labour spent on a given
translation suffers from the law of diminishing returns, i.e. more and more has
to be done in revision to extract fewer and fewer errors. The site is now 7
years old!
Happy browsing! IAN
BRUCE. Sept. 2013.
Latest
addition Nov. 18th, 2013: The serious business of translating Euler's Neue Gründsatze der Artellerie
is now underway, and Prop. I-XIII, or
the first chapter of Robins book relating to gunpowder and its ignition in the
barrel of a cannon is presented here;
Prop. XI is an exercise in mathematical modeling to try to establish the
underlying mechanism in the firing of a cannon regarding the gunpowder; both
Robins original work in English, and a translation of Euler's extra notes on
the matter are given; the remarks to the last two propositions act as summaries
of Euler's thoughts on the matter mainly; I have included the original German and also
the later French translations of these notes for comparison in Prop. I -
VII.
Previous
to this I had some fun with one of Huygens' earliest works, his De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae, which is normally
translated as 'Reasoning in Games of Chance'. This was the first written
account of questions involving probabilities, and is
worth a look if you are into that sort of thing: see Huygens below. Following
on the translation of one of Euler's famous works E65, there is now put in
place E296 & E297 , detailing Euler's use of the variational method
discovered by the young Lagrange some 20 years after Euler's : Methodus Inveniendi Lineas Curvas Maximi Minimive
Gaudentes……… had appeared in 1744, allowing Euler's work to be placed on
a much more solid analytic foundation, and to be called henceforth by Euler
himself, the Calculus of Variations, with which he was most pleased ; see
below; previous to this, I have been busy with Euler's papers (E305) , (E306),
(E307) on the propagation of sound ; see below.
Previous to this again, I have
put in place a translation of Euler's paper E524 relating to spherical
triangles, which in a very short and straight-forwards manner derives all the
formulas relating to spherical triangles, and is well worth reading if your
knowledge is hazy or lacking in such matters ; in addition, the second part of
the Trigonometria Britannica by Henry Gellebrand has now been translated and presented
here; concerning the solution of plane and spherical triangles by using
logarithms, essentially by using Napier's circular parts. In addition, a
new online version of Euler's classic work Introductio
in Analysin Infinitorum is presented here : see below. This completes
the main text books of Euler on Calculus and Introductory Analysis. Prior to
doing this, I had finished translating a
long forgotten work of John Napier : De Arte Logistica…….
Mirifici Logarithmorum Canon Descriptio..... (1614), by John Napier. This seminal work by Napier introduced
the mathematical world to the wonders of logarithms, and all in a small book of
tables. Most of the book, apart from the actual tables, is a manual for solving
plane and spherical triangles using logarithms. Included are some interesting
identities due to Napier. Jim Hanson's work on Napier's Promptuary and Bones is
in place here, with a few other items in the Napier index Link to the contents
document by clicking here. You may need to refresh your browser
as some files have been amended.
Mirifici
Logarithmorum Canon Constructio... (1617); A posthumous work by John Napier. This book along with the
above, started a revolution in computing by logarithms. The book is a 'must
read' for any serious student of mathematics, young or old. Link to the contents document by clicking
here.
De Arte Logistica (1617); A posthumous work by John Napier published by descendent Mark Napier, in 1839. This book sets out the rules for elementary arithmetic and algebra: the first book also presents an interesting introduction to the method of extracting roots of any order, using a fore-runner of what we now call Pascal's Triangle. The second and third books are now also complete. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Arithmetica Logarithmica, (1624), Henry Briggs. The theory and practise of base 10 logarithms is presented for the first time by Briggs. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Trigonometria Britannica, (1631), Henry Briggs. The methods used for producing a set of tables for the sine, tangent, and secant together with their logarithms is presented here. The second part, by Henry Gellebrand, is concerned with solving triangles, both planar and spherical. Latin text provided in Gellebrand's sections only. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Angulares Sectiones, (1617), Francisco Vieta. Edited and presented by Alexander Anderson. Vieta's fundamental work on working out the relations between the sine of an angle and the sine of multiples of the angle is set out in a labourous manner. No Latin text provided. Link to the document by clicking here. It is 25 pages long!
Artis Analyticae Praxis, (1631), 'from the posthumous notes of the philosopher and mathematician Thomas Harriot' , (edited by Walter Warner and others, though no name appears as the author), ' the whole described with care and diligence.' The almost trivial manner in which symbolic algebra was introduced into the mathematical scheme of things is still a cause for some wonder; it had of course been around in a more intuitive form for a long time prior to this publication. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Optica Promota, (1663), James Gregory. Herein the theory of the first reflecting telescope and a whole theory for elliptic and hyperbolic lenses and mirrors is presented from a geometrical viewpoint. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Opus Geometricum quadraturae circuli, Gregorius a St. Vincentio, (1647) (Books I & II only at present). A great march via geometric progressions expressed geometrically is undertaken by Gregorius as he examines the idea of a limit, refuting Zeno's Paradox; moving on eventually to discovering the logarithmic property of the hyperbola, before stumbling on the squaring of the circle. This is a long term project! Link to the contents document by clicking here.
Some Euler Papers solving problems relating to isochronous and brachistochrone curves are presented in E001 and E003; a dissertation on sound in E002; Euler's essay on the location and height of masts on ships E004; while reciprocal trajectories are considered in E005 (1729); E006 relates to an application of an isochronous curve; E007 is an essay on air-related phenomena; E008 figures out catenaries and other heavy plane curves; E009 is concerned with the shortest distance between two points on a convex surface; E010 introduces the exponential function as an integrating tool for reducing the order of differential equations; E011 is out of sequence, concerns transformations of differential equations; Ricatti's 1724 paper on second order differential equations is inserted here; E012 & E013 are concerned with tautochrones without & with resistance; E014 is an astronomical calculation; all due to Leonard Euler. E019, E020, E025, E026 & E054 & E134 & Fermat letter to Wallis, E031, E041, E044, and E045 are present also, some of which are referred to in the Mechanica; E736. Also papers by Lexell and Euler tr. by J. Sten appear here incl. E407 recently, and translations of E524, E842 & E81 by E. Hirsch. Lately I have translated Euler's contributions to the theory of sound: E305, E306, & E307 are now available. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
My translation of E015, Book I of Euler's Mechanica has been completed. This was Euler's first major work running to some 500 pages in the original, and included many of his innovative ideas on analysis. This is a complete translation of one of Euler's most important books. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
My translation of E016, Book 2 of Euler's Mechanica has also been completed; this is an even longer text than the above. Both texts give a wonderful insight into Euler's methods, which define the modern approach to analytical mechanics, in spite of a lack of a proper understanding at the time of the conservation laws on which mechanics is grounded. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
The translation of Euler's next major contribution to mechanics is now complete (E289); this contains the first definition of the moment of inertia of a body, and also develops the mathematics of adding infinitesimal velocities about principal axes: Theoria Motus Corporum Solidorum seu Rigida. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
A
translation of Euler's Foundations of Integral Calculus
is now complete. You can access these by clicking: Link to volume
I or Link to volume
II , or Link to volume
III.
A
translation of Euler's Foundations of Differential
Calculus is now complete. You can access these by clicking: Link to DifferentialCalculus .
A translation of Euler's Introduction
to Infinite Analysis is now complete with Appendices 1-6 on the nature
of surfaces. You can access all of Volumes I and 2 by clicking: Link to Analysis Intro .
A translation of Euler's Methodus Inveniendi Lineas Curvas Maximi
Minimive Gaudentes……… is now
complete, and includes E296 & E297, which explain rather fully the changed
view adopted by Euler. You can access it by clicking: Link toMaxMin.
A translation of
Euler's translation
of Robins' work on gunnery, with remarks, Neue Gründsatze der Artellerie is now underway: Prop. I-XIII to date or Ch. One of the original work is now completed. You can
access it by clicking: Link to Neue
Gründsatze.
An early translation of Euler's Letters to a German Princess E343, is presented here in mostly subject bundles. These 233 little essays give a rare insight into Euler's mind, and to the state of physics in the 1760's. Link to the contents vol.1 document by clicking here.
Link to the contents
vol.2 document by
clicking here.
My new translation of Newton's Principia is now complete; this translation includes resetting of all the original type, new diagrams, and additional notes from several sources; an earlier annotated translation of Section VIII of Book II of Newton's Principia on sound is now included in the main flow of the text, which helps in understanding Euler's work De Sono. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
An annotated translation of Johan. Bernoulli's Vibrations of Chords is presented. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
An annotated translation of Christian Huygens' Pendulum Clock is presented. Here you will also find the first work by Huygens on the probability of games of chance: De Ratiociniis in Ludo ALeae. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
An annotated translation of Brook Taylor's Methodus Incrementorum Directa & Inversa is presented. Link to the contents document by clicking here.
The Lunes of Hippocratus are extended by Wallenius in a much neglected paper presented 'pro gradu' in 1766 at the Royal Academy of Abo (Turku, in Finland); the student defending the paper was Daniel Wijnquist; a full geometrical derivation of each lune is given, followed by a trigonometric analysis. I wish to thank Johan Sten for drawing my attention to this work, and for his help in tracking down an odd reference. Link to the document by clicking here.
Ian Bruce. Nov. 18th
, 2013, latest revision.
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