44 



century, has been presented to the University of Cambridge, as the 

 best means of rendering it subservient to the advancement of mine- 

 talogical science. 



M. AUGUSTIN CAUCHY* had the good fortune to belong to that 

 middle class of society which is neither exposed to the miseries of 

 poverty nor to the temptations of wealth. His father was Archi- 

 viste-Secretaire of the Senat Conservateur from about 1800 or 

 1801, and of the Chamber of Peers from 1814 to 1830. Of two 

 brothers, both younger than himself, one became an ornament 

 to the highest court of justice, to which he was promoted, and the 

 other succeeded his father as Secretaire-Archiviste to the Chamber 

 of Peers. Augustin Cauchy was born on the 21st of August, 

 1789. His classical education commenced early under his father, 

 and was ' continued afterwards by able teachers at the IZcole 

 centrale du Pantheon. He left this school in 1804, at the age of 

 fifteen, carrying off the second prize for Latin composition, and the 

 first for Greek and Latin verse. This success procured for him the 

 wreath given to the best classic among the pupils of the Ecole 

 centrale. After having attended for one year only the public mathe- 

 matical lectures of an excellent Professor, Dinet, Cauchy felt himself 

 qualified to enter the examination of candidates for admission to the 

 Ecole Poly technique. He was admitted, being second on the list, 

 in 1805, at the age of sixteen years; and at the end of the two 

 years' course, he came out third in 1807. On quitting the school 

 he adopted the career of the Ponts et Chaussees, in which he passed 

 rapidly through the inferior grades, was employed in many works, 

 and became ingenieur en chef in 1825. 



On the 6th of May, 1811, at the age of twenty-two years, he 

 presented to the mathematical class of the Institute, a very re- 

 markable memoir on the polyhedron of geometry, and completed 

 the theory of a new kind of regular polyhedrons discovered by 

 M. Poinsot. Legendre, a most austere judge, regarded this me- 

 moir as the production of well-exercised powers which promised in 

 due time the highest success. He urged the young author to follow 

 out these researches, and to endeavour to establish a certain theo- 



* This notice is extracted principally from the Letter of M. Biot to M. de 

 Falloux. 



