POINCARE AND THE FRENCH ACADEMY 267 



HENRI POINCARE AND THE FRENCH ACADEMY 1 



By M. FREDERIC MASSON 



PABIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



THE Academie Franchise is primarily a literary organization, and 

 its special work is the preparation of a dictionary. But even in 

 this enterprise it is desirable, as M. Masson points out in the document 

 of which I propose to translate a part, to have expert assistance at hand 

 in the matter of the meaning and use of scientific terms. It is probably 

 for this reason that Henri Poincare, already a member of thirty-five 

 academies, was this year called to membership in the most celebrated 

 of all academies. 



The great mathematician entered the august body with a eulogy of 

 his predecessor, the poet Sully-Prudhomme — which task was not as 

 strange to him as might seem at first glance, since Sully-Prudhomme 

 was educated for a scientist and all of his work shows a scientific turn — 

 and was received, with the customary biographical welcome, by the 

 historian Frederic Masson. A study by a layman and for the ears of 

 laymen, M. Masson's address is a thoroughly popular effort; but it has 

 a great deal that is pleasing, and not a little that is suggestive. I 

 quote, with considerable abbreviation, from the part which deals most 

 directly with the new academician's life and work. 



You were born, a little more than half a century ago, in that dear 

 and glorious Lorraine which has furnished this body so many men 

 remarkable in lines of activity so diverse; so soon after we have been 

 cruelly touched by the death of Theuriet, of Gebhart and of Cardinal 

 Mathieu, you appear, attesting, by the exercise of a totally different 

 genius, the inexhaustible fecundity of your native province. 



You come of an old race long established at Neufchateau, and lo- 

 cated at Nancy for a century. Of your name — Pontcare (square bridge), 

 rather than Poincare (square point), for, as you have said, one might 

 conceive a square bridge, but scarcely a square point — there have been 

 magistrates, savants, lawyers, soldiers like the Commandant Poincare, 

 your great-uncle, whose tenderness for his wife and whose sad adven- 

 tures M. Chuquet has narrated — like that other Poincare, also an of- 

 ficer, who died for the republic in the year IX., whose son the first 

 consul himself recommended to the ministry of war for a place in their 

 offices, since, a corporal in the Seventh Hussars, "he had lost a leg 

 and a thigh in one of the last battles which adorned the last campaign 

 on the Rhine." 



x Translated, with an introduction, by Professor Roy Temple House. 



