292 A Short History of Astronomy [Cn. XI. 



St. Petersburg, Euler received and accepted an invitation 

 to join the newly created Academy of Sciences there (1727). 

 This first appointment carried with it a stipend, and the 

 duties were the general promotion of science ; subsequently 

 Euler undertook more definite professorial work, but most 

 of his energy during the whole of his career was 

 devoted to writing mathematical papers, the majority of 

 which were published by the St. Petersburg Academy. 

 Though he took no part in politics, Russian autocracy 

 appears to have been oppressive to him, reared as he had 

 been among Swiss and Protestant surroundings ; and in 

 1741 he accepted an invitation from Frederick the Great, 

 a despot of a less pronounced type, to come to Berlin, and 

 assist in reorganising the Academy of Sciences there. On 

 being reproached cxne day by the Queen for his taciturn 

 and melancholy demeanour, he justified his silence on the 

 ground that he had just come from a country where speech 

 was liable to lead to hanging ; * but notwithstanding this 

 frank criticism he remained on good terms with the Russian 

 court, and continued to draw his stipend as a member 

 of the St. Petersburg Academy and to contribute to its 

 Transactions. Moreover, after 25 years spent at Berlin, he 

 accepted a pressing invitation from the Empress Catherine II. 

 and returned to Russia (1766). 



He had lost the use of one eye in 1735, a disaster which 

 called from him the remark that he would henceforward 

 have less to distract him from his mathematics ; the second 

 eye went soon after his return to Russia, and with the 

 exception of a short time during which an operation restored 

 the partial use of one eye he remained blind till the end 

 of his life. But this disability made little difference to his 

 astounding scientific activity ; and it was only after nearly 

 17 years of blindness that as a result of a fit of apoplexy 

 "he ceased to live and to calculate" (1783). 



Euler was probably the most versatile as well as the most 

 prolific of mathematicians of all time. There is scarcely 

 any branch of modern analysis to which he was not a large 

 contributor, and his extraordinary powers of devising and 

 applying methods of calculation were employed by him 

 with great success in each of the existing branches of applied 



* "C'est que je viens d'un pays oil, quand on parle, on est pendu." 



