602 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 120, 



of a supposed adamantine necessity, was 

 born (a Eussian of Eussians), in the gov- 

 ernment of Nijni Novgorod; Tchebicheff 

 [Chebyshev] , the prince and conqueror of 

 prime numbers, able to cope with their re- 

 fractory character and to confine the stream 

 of their erratic flow, their progression, 

 within algebraic limits, in the adjacent 

 circumscription of Moscow ; and our own 

 Cayley was cradled amidst the snows of St. 

 Petersburg." [Sylvester himself contracted 

 Chebyshev's limits for the distribution of 

 primes.] " I think I may fairly affirm that 

 a simple direct solution of the problem of 

 the duplication of the cube by mechanical 

 means was never accomplished down to 

 this day. I will not say but that, by a 

 merciful interpretation of his oracle, Apollo 

 may have put up with the solution which 

 the ancient geometers pbtained by means of 

 drawing two parabolic curves; but of this I 

 feel assured that had I been then alive, and 

 could have shown my solution, which I am 

 about to exhibit to you, Apollo would have 

 leaped for joy and danced (like David be- 

 fore the ark) , with mj"^ triple cell in hand, 

 in place of his lyre, before his own dupli- 

 cated altar." 



That in the very next year Sylvester was 

 taking a more active part than has hither- 

 to been known in the organization of the 

 incipient Johns Hopkins University is seen 

 from the following letter to him in London 

 from the great Joseph Henry : 



Smithsonian Institution, 



August 25, 1875. 

 My Dear Sie : 



Your letter of the 13th inst. has just been received 

 and in reply I have to say that I have written to 

 President Gilman of the Hopkins University giving 

 my vievps as to what it ought to be and have stated 

 that if properly managed it may do more tor the ad- 

 vance of literature and science in this country than 

 any other institution ever established; it is entirely 

 independent of public favor and may lead instead of 

 following popular opinion. 



I have advised that liberal salaries be paid to the 

 occupants of the principal chairs and that to fill them 



the best men in the world who can be obtained 

 should be secured. 



I have mentioned your name prominently as one 

 of the very first mathematicians of the day; what th& 

 result will be, however, I can not say. 



The Trustees are all citizens of Baltimore and 

 among them I have some personal friends ; the Presi- 

 dent, Mr. Gilman, and one of them, came to Wash- 

 ington a few weeks ago to get from me any sugges- 

 tions that I might have to offer. 



It is to be regretted that in this country the Trus- 

 tees, who control the management of bequests of this- 

 character, think it important to produce a palpable 

 manifestation of of the institution to be established 

 by spending a large amount of the bequest in archi- 

 tectural displays. Against this custom I have pro- 

 tested and have asserted that if the proper men and 

 the necessary implements of instruction are provided, 

 the teaching may be done in log cabins. 



It would give me great pleasure to have you again 

 as my guest, and I will do what I can to secure your 

 election. Very truly your friend, 



Joseph Heney. 



We know the result. 



Sylvester was offered the place; de- 

 manded a higher salary ; won ; came. 



I was his first pupil, his first class, and he 

 always insisted that it was I who brought 

 him back to the Theory of Invariative Forms. 

 In a letter to me of September 24, 1882, 

 he writes : "Nor can I ever be oblivious 

 of the advantage which I derived from your 

 well-grounded persistence in inducing me to 

 lecture on the Modern Algebra, which had 

 the effect of bringing my mind back to this 

 subject, from which it had for some time 

 previously been withdrawn, and in which I 

 have been laboring, with a success which 

 has considerably exceeded my anticipations, 

 ever since." 



He made this same statement at greater 

 length in his celebrated address at the Johns 

 Hopkins on February 22, 1877 : "At this 

 moment I happen to be engaged in a re- 

 search of fascinating interest to myself, and 

 which, if the day only responds to the 

 promise of its dawn, will meet, I believe, a 

 sympathetic response from the professors of 

 our divine algebraical art wherever scat- 

 tered through the world. 



