304 Annual Report of the Council. 



the Centenary Fund for the enlargement of the Society's 

 house. 



At our last Annual Meeting M. HALPHEN was elected 

 one of our honorary members, and we have already to 

 record his premature death. GUSTAVE HALPHEN was 

 born at Rouen on the 30th of October, 1844, and, after a 

 brilliant career as a student at the Ecole Polytechnique, 

 became an officer in the Artillery. He served with great 

 distinction in the war of 1870, especially after he was 

 attached to General Faidherbe's Army of the North. He 

 received the decoration of the Legion of Honour from the 

 General after the battle of Pont-Noyelles, and his manage- 

 ment of his battery in the battle of St.-Quentin is specially 

 mentioned in Faidherbe's " History of the campaign of the 

 army of the North." Halphen continued in active service 

 till 1873, when he became attached as teacher and 

 examiner for admission to the Ecole Polytechnique. In 

 1886, he became major, and joined his regiment; and 

 was on the point of becoming lieutenant-colonel when he 

 died, at the age of 44, on the 23rd of May, 1889. Halphen's 

 mathematical publications began in 1869, and he published 

 more than a hundred memoirs on Algebra, the Higher 

 Geometry, the Theory of Numbers, and Elliptic Functions. 

 All his works have shown a uniformly high merit, and 

 his name will be remembered in connection with every sub- 

 ject that he handled. The esteem in which his work is 

 held by contemporary analysts has been well expressed by 

 Brioschi, himself one of the greatest, in announcing his death 

 to the Academy dei Lincei of which Halphen was an hono- 

 rary member, and to which reference may be made for 

 fuller details. 



The following papers and communications have been 

 read, or will be read before the close of the session, at the 

 ordinary meetings of the Society : — 



