842 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that geometry could shed on the most obscure and difficult questions ; 

 and M. Bertrand has said of them that they gave demonstrations 

 and results admirable as models of elegance and generality, 



M, Chaslcs gained notoriety a few years ago by his connection 

 with a number of manuscripts and autographs purporting to be by 

 distinguished men of the j^ast, among them Galileo, Pascal, Sir Isaac 

 Newton, and even Julius Caesar and other Roman emperors and the 

 apostles, which he bought of one Irene Lucas and which proved to 

 be nearly all forgeries by that adventurer. Among them were some 

 which claimed for Pascal the merit of Newton's most celebrated dis- 

 coveries. M. Chasles earnestly defended the authenticity of the docu- 

 ments, of which he was fully and honestly convinced, and was sus- 

 tained by some eminent members of the Academy, until Lucas was 

 unmistakably shown to have fabricated them. Out of twenty-seven 

 thousand papers which he bought, only about a hundred were 

 genuine. 



M. Bertrand, summing up the mathematical work of M. Chasles, 

 says that more than once, without abandoning the geometric method, 

 he " has shown with a rare felicity how all mathematical truths are 

 connected by a close and mysterious bond. We owe to him, in one of 

 the highest and most difficult theories of the integral calculus, elegant 

 theorems admired by analysts ; he has added to mechanics a chapter 

 which has become classic on the displacement of solid bodies ; he has 

 found in the theory of attraction beautiful and general theorems which 

 have revived the theory of static electricity. . . . All geometricians, 

 without distinction of nationality or school, have bowed before this 

 venerable old man ; all have admired his inventive power, his fertility, 

 which age seemed to rejuvenate ; his ardor and his zeal continued into 

 his latest days." 



