MEMOIR OF LEGENDRE. 



By M. Elie de Beaumont, 

 Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. 



TRANSLATED FOR THE SJIITIISOJaAN INSTITUTION BY C. A. ALEXANDER. 



It lias been said tliat the distinctive stamp of our age is t"he aspiration after 

 material well-being. Science is accused of having fostered tliis instinct by the 

 numerous useful applications with which it has endowed humanity ; and it is 

 true that in our day chemistry, steam, electricity, have remodelled the face of 

 the world. It is quite certain, also, that a scientific education better understood 

 and more generally distributed has multiplied the number of those who, without 

 having received from nature faculties of the first order, have yet proved capable 

 of deriving from science great advantages as well for others as themselves. We 

 may well suppose that even minds still more developed, seduced by the allure- 

 ments of fortune or yielding to stern necessity, have sometimes deviated from 

 the arduous paths of pure science into the more inviting paths of applied science. 

 But we have seen also, and see daily, men of a more robust temperament who, 

 listening only to the inspirations of genius, devote their whole existence to stren- 

 uous labors which, for the moment, will contribute merely to the increase of 

 science; of which future generations alone can make useful applications; which 

 will not be appreciated even in a manner somewhat general until long after the 

 death of their authors; and from which those authors will themselves have 

 derived no other enjoyment than the majestic and exciting spectacle of great 

 truths covered as yet with an impenetrable veil to all eyes but their own, 

 together with the consciousness of a duty fulfilled towards Providence, who has 

 intrusted to them the instruments of the future progress of the human race. 



Among those who seem to have been born to vindicate our age from an 

 unjust reproach, and to exalt humanity in its own esteem, a high rank must be 

 accorded to a geometer who occupied a place in this academy for nearly 50 

 years, who has enriched our publications with some of their most valuable con- 

 tents, and bequeathed to future ages works of paramount importance ; whose 

 merit is every day more generally recognized, and whose memory awaits by 

 just title an oflicial testimonial of the S3'mpathetic admiration which has sm'- 

 vived him in the affectionate remembi-ance of all his colleagues. 



Adrien Marie Legendre was born, September 18, 1752, in a condition of life 

 which left to him the credit of being indebted to his own merit for all that he 

 might eventually become. He finished in good season, at the college Mazarin, 

 those solid classical studies from which he derived a lasting taste for the litera- 

 ture of the ancients, the happy fruits of which are to be recognized in the ele- 

 gance, the purity, and the lucid conciseness of his writings. There also he 

 commenced the study of mathematics under a highly distinguished master, the 

 Abbe Marie, who failed not to remark his ardor and was struck with the per- 

 spicuity of his exercises. But a little time had elapsed after his retirement from 

 college when the judicious professor publishing, in 1774, a treatise on mechan- 

 ics, thought proper to embody in it several remarkable fragments derived from 

 his disciple. The modesty of the scholar inclined him to shrink from designa- 



