35 
fession. Suffice it to say, that he became ingenieur en chef in 1823, 
and was employed on many public works. 
Prior to this date, however, he had been brought prominently 
before the world. The French Institute had proposed as the sub- 
ject of the Prize Essay for 1816, the determination of the wave 
motion of a disturbed fluid. M. Poisson, who, as he himself states, 
had been for a long time engaged on this problem, sent in a first 
memoir on the subject in October 1815, followed by a second in 
December, There is reason to suppose, that one object which the 
Institute had in view in proposing this problem was to draw out 
M. Poisson. That any living man should have succeeded in wrest- 
ing the prize from him, who was justly regarded as a giant in in- 
vestigations of the kind, is matter of astonishment to this day. That 
that man should have been Cauchy, who justly looked up to Poisson , 
as his model for imitation, and who, years after, acknowledges with 
gratitude his obligations to that great mathematician, as the guide 
of his early career, must have greatly surprised even Poisson him- 
self ; yet such was the fact. The prize was awarded to Cauchy on 
the ground of the greater generality and freedom from limitations 
which his solution of the problem presented. I am not sure that 
M. Poisson was satisfied with the decision. At any rate, his own 
memoir was immediately published, whilst that of M. Cauchy, who 
was not then a member of the Institute, lay twelve years in manu- 
script. In this case the Institute, by following their ordinary 
vieious practice, conferred a real benefit on science, by allowing M. 
Cauchy to add copious notes to his essay. The two works of Poisson 
and Cauchy now stand together as masterpieces of analytical investi- 
gation, and form the starting-points from which all future writers on 
the subject must commence their progress. Prior to this period, M. 
Cauchy had published several admirable papers on subjects connected 
with pure geometry; and the proof now afforded of the fertility of his 
genius would at once have secured him an admission into the Insti- 
tute, had there been a vacancy. The termination of the brief struggle 
of the hundred days unhappily too soon created the desired vacancy, 
in a manner little to the benefit of M. Cauchy, who was named to 
fill it. The Institute had been remodelled by Napoleon in 1803, 
and the legitimate monarchy, on their second restoration, at once 
resolved to re-establish it in its original form. In effecting this 
