94 Correspondence of J. Nickles. 
board. But it was evident to all that Cauchy would not and 
could not take the oath, and so his nomination was not ratified 
the government. It was to the loss of science; for with astro- 
snoiical labors thus raadles his duty, he would have carried into 
them his usual ardor, and the “ Mécanique Céleste” would pro! 
ably have been advanced by new discoveries, for which we shall 
now have long to wait. 
It was his fidelity to a sense of duty, which was afterwards 
the occasion and cause of his rendering a great service to astron- 
omy, in furnishing it with the means of estimating, directly, by 
nine ytieal formulas universal and certain in their application, the 
secular inequalities of planetary movements, which inequalities 
render any tables of these moveinents more and more faulty. 
In 1848, Cauchy was charged by the Academy with verifying 
the determination of an inequality of this kind which M. 
Verrier announced he had discovered in the motion of the planet 
, the period of which embraced 795 years. It was highly 
important to know it, for its maximum effect on the longitude of 
a exceeded fifteen minutes of a degree, according to the 
valuation of LeVerrier. A direct analytic process being imprac- 
per > secu the desired result by a very bold sage 
interpolation, which required immense calculations. ‘'o relieve 
himself from the labor of verifying such an array of n amber 4 
Cauchy invented an analytic method by which errors of this 
sort are determined directly, in all cases and with a ois i in 
Amery as they belong to a higher order. He t 
duced the results of LeVerrier; and henceforth in probleme 
this nature, the power of abstract science will supersede individ- 
abor. : 
After the revolution of 1848, the Republic, more tolerant than he 
the preceding Monarchy had been, restored to Cauchy the math- 
ematical chair in the Faculty of Sciences of Paris, the only one 
of the ancient professorships which had remained vacant from : 
1830. J ustice to him requires that it oo be told that he gave a 
to the poor the emoluments of the plac u 
M. Biot concludes his sketch with ‘the following remark: — 
‘The view which I have given of the external circumstances 
the life of Cauchy, shows us not only what he was, bs als 
what he might have been as a mathematician. Ha 
able, like Euler and Lagrange to spend his life, without pre 
ance, in quiet study, he would have been one of the grandest — 
lights of mathematical seience. By reason of the irregularity : 
and a which external events impressed on his genius, his 
influence on this science will not be aly ad gree “until time 
shall hive! devidoned all their consequen ; 
Note.—The preceding is derived from ae article by Biot. We. 
add to it the following. a 
