2i 4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Had the complete solution of the quintic been possible, 

 and had Dary found it, or had he succeeded, like Abel, in 

 proving it impossible, his name would be known to all mathe- 

 maticians, but the men who fail to complete a piece of work, 

 however near they come to the completion, and however 

 necessary their work may be for the final result, are nearly 

 always forgotten (except by the most diligent digger into the 

 past), although in intellect they may be far beyond the fortu- 

 nate completer. 



Furthermore it is the habit of the half-educated man to 

 attribute everything to the one name he knows : all military 

 maxims to Napoleon, all mathematics of the seventeenth or 

 eighteenth century to Newton ; it is only those who go much 

 deeper into history who find out that the greatest men have 

 not done all the work. 



The English mathematician who requires some information 

 of the history of mathematics labours under a great dis- 

 advantage. There are no books to help him, as it is not an 

 outline of his subject that he requires, but a comprehensive 

 treatise, dealing in detail with the successive discoveries. 

 Montucla's Histoire des Mathematiques, in four large quarto 

 volumes, has no index, is very incomplete, and can only be 

 obtained second-hand at great cost. 



Cantor's work is also costly, and besides the disadvantage 

 of being in German is very defective where British mathe- 

 maticians are concerned, for unfortunately the English mathe- 

 maticians imitate the cuckoo, in putting their eggs in strange 

 nests. 



Who would think of looking for valuable mathematical 

 problems and theorems in papers bearing such titles as The 

 Ladies 1 Diary, The Gentleman's Diary, The British Diary, 

 The Leeds Correspondent, The Northumbrian Mirror, The Liver- 

 pool Student, The Miscellanea Curiosa, and numerous others 

 with titles giving no index to the contents? And yet, if the 

 history of mathematics is to be written, it is amongst such 

 papers that we must search. 



What mathematician would think of looking into a work 

 bearing the strange device Instruction given in the Drawing 

 School established by the Dublin Society! And yet this book, 

 written by Joseph Fenn (a name almost forgotten in mathe- 

 matics) gives the first example of the use in the British Isles 



