Bolzano, Cauc y and "New Ana sis"

of Ear Nineteent Century

I. GRATTAN-GuINNESS
Communicated by J. E. HOFMANN

Summary
Ill t h i s p a p e r 1 I discuss t h e d e v e l o p m e n t Of m a t h e m a t i c a l a n a l y s i s d u r i n g t h e
second a n d t h i r d decades of tile n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y ; a n d in p a r t i c u l a r I a s s e r t t h a t
t h e w e l l - k n o w n c o r r e s p o n d e n c e o f : n e w ideas to b e f o u n d in t h e w r i t i n g s of BOLZANO
a n d CAueHY is not a coincidence, b u t t h a t CA~ICH¥, h a d r e a d one p a r t i c u l a r p a p e r of
BOLZANO a n d d r e w o n its r e s u l t s w i t h o u t a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t , T h e reasons for t h i s
c o n j e c t u r e i n v o l v e n o t o n l y t h e t e x t s ill q u e s t i o n b u t also t h e s t a t e of d e v e l o p m e n t
of m a t h e m a t i c a l a n a l y s i s itself, CAUClty b o t h as p e r s o n a l i t y a n d as m a t h e m a t i c i a n ,
a n d t h e rivalries w h i c h were p r e v a l e n t i n P a r i s a t t h a t time.

Contents
t. I n t r o d u c t i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
2. T h e C o m m o n I d e a s in BOLZAI~O a n d C,~ucI~,Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
3. T h e N e w A n a l y s i s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
4. T h e Old A n a l y s i s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38t
5. CAUCI~Y'S O r i g i n a l i t y as a M a t h e m a t i c i a n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
6. T h e S t a t e of P a r i s i a n M a t h e m a t i c s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
7. CAtJCHY'S P e r s o n a l i t y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
8. T h e A v a i l a b i l i t y a n d F a m i l i a r i t y of BOLZANO'S W o r k . . . . . . . . . . . 395
9- Tile P e r s o n a l R e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n BOLZANO a n d CAUCHY . . . . . . . . . . 397
10. E p i l o g u e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
I n d e x of N a m e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

1. I n t r o d u c t i o n
T h e c e n t r a l t h e m e of t h i s p a p e r is a n h i s t o r i c a l c o n j e c t u r e c o n c e r n i n g t h e
d e v e l o p m e n t of m a t h e m a t i c a l a n a l y s i s i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y . I t is
w e l l k n o w n t h a t t h e m a j o r e v e n t w a s t h e p u b l i c a t i o n i n t 8 2 1 of t h e Cours d'Ana-

1 T h i s p a p e r is a revised a n d g r e a t l y e x p a n d e d v e r s i o n of a l e c t u r e e n t i t l e d "Did
C a u c h y r e a d B o l z a n o before w r i t i n g his Cours d'Analyse?" g i v e n a t tile Problem-
geschichte der Mathematik s e m i n a r a t Oberwolfach, W e s t G e r m a n y , o n t h e 26 th No-
v e m b e r , 1969. I wish to t h a n k Professors J. E. HOFMANN a n d C . J . SCRIBA for t h e i r
i n v i t a t i o n t o t h i s seminar.
T h e t e x t d r a w s f r e q u e n t l y o n m y h i s t o r y of The Development o/ the Foundations
o/ Mathematical Analysis /rom Euler to Riemann a n d Joseph Fourier 1768--1830,
w h i c h are b o t h to be p u b l i s h e d b y t h e M.I.T. Press a n d are referred t o ill l a t e r foot-
n o t e s as Foundations a n d Fourier, respectively. Tile l a t t e r w o r k was w r i t t e n w i t h t h e
c o l l a b o r a t i o n of Dr. J. R. R A V E T Z , a n d t h e f o r m e r w i t h t h e help of his d e t a i l e d
criticism: I w i s h to r e c o r d h e r e m y i n d e b t e d n e s s t o his assistance.
 ]3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 373

lyse of AUCUSTIN-LouIS CAUCHY (t789--t857), s in which CAUCHY presented a

new type of analytical reasoning far superior to previous ideas for the devel-
opment of analysis -- limits, functions, the calculus, and so on. CAUCHY'S
achievement was the so-called "arithmeticisation" of analysis, a method whose
development and application has been a major interest for mathematicians ever
since.
It has been also well-known for some time that CAUCHYhad been anticipated
in his basic ideas of the new analysis by an obscure pamphlet published in Prague
in t 817 by BERNARD BOLZANO(t 78t --1848). In contrast to the broad programme
of CAUCHY'S book, BOLZANO devoted his little work to the proof of a theorem
which he described in its title: "Purely analytical proof of the theorem, that
between any two values [of a function/(x)] which guarantee an opposing result
[in sign] lies at least one real root of the equation [/ (x) ----0]." s The "pure ana-
lysis" which ]3OLZANOproduced in his proof is exactly that which we find greatly
developed and extended in CAUCHY'S Coufs d'Analyse and his later writings on
analysis.
I do not believe that we have here an example of a remarkable coincidence
of new ideas. Such occurrences are of course well-known in the history of science,
but I shall argue for the conjecture that in this case CAUCHYwas welt acquainted
with BOLZANO'Spaper and that he drew on its novelties without ever making
acknowledgement to him.
The argument for this thesis is not based on new documentary evidence:
there is no reference to BOLZANO'S work among the scattered fragments of
CAUCHY'S papers and letters, no library record of CAUCHY'Sreading or borrowing
BOLZANO'S paper, no copy of it in his personal library (which in fact has been
dispersed). My reasons for the conjecture are circumstantial and related to
intellectual matters, and involve not only the general development of analysis
at that time but also that aspect of the growth of science which is ignored all too
often by its historians -- the social and educational situation of the period; and
the personalities of the principal characters.

2. The Common Ideas in Bolzano and Cauchy

We consider first the directly corresponding results in the two works, in each
case in its general historical setting.
2.1. Continuity of a Function. Normally the continuity of a function was then
identified with its description by a single algebraic expression, and the function
was usually thought to be differentiable: in fact, under EULER'S influence the
2 A.-L. CAucI~Y, Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Royale Polytechnique. I TM Pattie: Ana-
lyse Algdbrique (1821, Paris) = Oeuvres, (2) 3. No further parts of this work were
published: it is referred to in later footnotes as Cours.
3 ]3. BOLZANO, "Rein analytischer Beweis des Lehrsatzes, dass zwischen je zwey
Werthen, die ein entgegengesetztes Resultat gew~hren, wenigstens eine reelle Wurzel
der Gleichung liege," (18t7, P r a g u e ) = Abh. KSnigl. B6hm. Gesell. Wiss., (3) 5
(18t4--17: publ. 18t8), 60pp. = Ostwald's Klassiker, No. t53 (ed. P. JOURDAI~¢:
1905, Leipzig), 3--43. French trans, in Rev. d'Hist. Sci. Appl., 17 (1964), 136--164:
there have also been various other translations and issues. The paper is referred to
in later footnotes as Beweis.
374 I. GRATTAN-GuINNESS:

term "continuous" was usually confined to functions which we now call "dif-
ferentiable". 4 There were efforts to move away from this view, including by
EULER himself; but nobody had come at all close to the formulation of continuity
given b y BOLZANOand CAUCHY:
BOLZANO: "A function /(x) varies according to the law of continuity for all
values of x which lie inside or outside certain limits, is nothing other than this:
if x is any such value, the difference /(x +co)--/(x) can be made smaller than
any given quantity, if one makes w as small as one ever wants to. ''~
CAUCHY: "The function /(x) will remain continuous with respect to x between
the given limits, if between these limits an infinitely small increase of the variable
always produces an infinitely small increase of the function itself".*
One of the most interesting and important features of this formulation of
continuity is that it extends the old formulation beyond that of differentiability,
for it also encompasses functions with corners. I think that BOLZANOwas aware
of the extension in t8t7, for in later manuscripts he studied the distinction
between the new continuity and differentiability to the extent of constructing
a continuous non-differentiable function of the type studied later only by the
school of WEIERSTRASSin the t870's. ~ But CAUC~IYseems to have seen the new
idea only as a reformulation of the old one when he wrote the Cours d'Analyse,
for the examples he gave there of continuous functions were all of standard
a
differentiable algebraic expressions, with the functions x~ for negative a, and x '
regarded as "discontinuous" at x----0 since they then became infinite) In fact,
he explicitly discussed the distinction only in a paper of 1844, and then in a
way which tried to give the impression that he had known it all along:
"In the works of Euler and Lagrange, a function is caned continuous or
discontinuous, according as the diverse values of that function, corresponding
to diverse values of the variable ... are or are not produced by one and the same
equation . . . . Nevertheless the definition that we have just recalled is far from
offering mathematical precision; for the analytical laws to which functions can
be subjected are generally expressed by algebraic or transcendental formulae
[that is, b y the EULERIAN range of algebraic expressions~, and it can happen that
various formulae represent, for certain values of a variable x, the same function:
then, for other values of x, different functions."
He then quoted the example
(20
V ~ -- 2 f x~ / xifx=>0
~. t~fidt=t_xif x < O, (t)
0

EULER'S classic presentation of his theory of functions was given in the opening
sections of both volumes of his Introductio ad analysin in/initorum (2 vols: 1748,
Lausanne) = Opera Omnia, (1) 8 - - 9 .
5 B . B O L Z A N O , Beweis, preface, part IIa.
A.-L. CAUCI~Y,Cours, 34--35 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 43.
7 See B. BOLZANO, Functionenlehre (ed. K. RYCHLIK), in his Schriflen, 1 (1930,
Prague), esp. pp. 66--70, 88--89.
8 A.-L. CAvcI~Y, Cours, 36--37 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 44--45.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 375

in which the first two forms are " c o n t i n u o u s " in EULER'S sense while the third
is " d i s c o n t i n u o u s " ;
"... b u t the indeterminacy ceases if for Euler's definition we substitute t h a t
which I have given [in the Cours d ' A n a l y s e j - . 9
2.2. Convergence of a Series. A m a j o r innovation of the new analysis was the
s t u d y of the convergence of a series (or of classes of series) as a general problem
separate from and indeed prior to t h a t of its s u m m a t i o n ; b u t it would be wrong
to presume t h a t the problem of convergence h a d previously been ignored or
taken for granted. 1 7 th and t8 *h c e n t u r y mathematicians were perfectly well
aware t h a t a series was to be interpreted as a t e r m - b y - t e r m addition of its
members, and t h a t individual series (usually series of constant terms or certain
power series) could be shown to be convergent, especially if t h e y were associated
with some geometrical limiting procedure such as the approximation to a curve
b y a polygon. B u t this understanding had been endangered during the 18 th
century, especially b y EULER'S great ability to devise complicated new methods
of summation of series. T o d a y we understand t h a t some of these methods reduce
to orthodox smnmation for orthodox convergent series and some do n o t ; b u t
EULER and his contemporaries seemed to have regarded all methods as legiti-
mate, giving " t h e " sum of the series rather than its sum relative to the m e t h o d
of summation involved. This more sophisticated understanding began to develop
only in the t 890's, under the leadership of BOREL: 1° until then, series considered
" d i v e r g e n t " (that is, oscillatory series as well as those with an infinite sum)
had been banished from analysis under the influence of CAUCHY'S work. B u t he
and BOLZANO were not the first to consider the convergence of a series to be an
i m p o r t a n t p r o p e r t y w o r t h y of investigation of its own. GAUSS had even a d v a n c e d
as far as a sophisticated convergence test b y t 8t 211: FOUI~IER h a d already treated
the convergence of particular examples of his series in 1807, in his first paper on
the diffusion of heatl~: LAGRANGE h a d tried to find expressions for the remainder
term of a TAYLOR series, in connection with his long held belief t h a t the series
could serve as the foundation of the calculus; 13 and LACROIX was also aware of
the need for general formulation of convergence. ~4 B o t h BOLZANO and CAOCHY
also stressed t h a t the convergence of a series is to be determined only b y the
t e n d e n c y of the n th partial sums to a limiting value s as n tended to infinity; ~5
9 A.-L. CAuci~¥, "M6moire sur les fonctions continues ou discontinues" C.R.
Acad. Roy. Sci., 18 (t844), 1t6--130 (see pp. t16--117) = Oeuvres, (t) 8, t45--160
(pp. 145--146).
10 For extended discussion, see my Foundations, ch. 4.
11 K. F. Gauss, "Disquisites generales . . . " Comm. Soc. Reg. Sci. Gdltingen Rec.,
2 (18t1--13: publ. 1813), cl. math., 46pp. = Werke, 3, 123--t62: see art. 16. For a
history of convergence tests, see the appendix to my Foundations.
13 j. B. J. FOURIER, " Sur la propagation de la chaleur," MS. 1851, Ecole Nationale
des Ponts el Chaussdes, Paris: see arts. 42--43. The publication of this entire manuscript
constitutes the body of m y Fourier: see there ch. 7 on this point.
13 See especially his Thdorie des/onctions analytiques .... (2nd edition: 1813, Paris)
= Oeuvres, 9: part 1, arts. 35--40.
i~ See especially his Traild du calcul diJ/drentiel et du calcul intdgral (Ist edition:
t 797--t800, Paris), 1, 4--9.
15 B. BoLzAxo, Beweis, art. 5. A.-L. CAIJCHY, Cours, t 2 3 - - t 2 5 = Oeuvres, (2) 3,
114--t15.
376 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS:

thus this correspondence is not so striking, although the idea was still then v e r y
m u c h a new one. B u t in both works we find a new t y p e of result, not to be found
in any other c o n t e m p o r a r y writing. BOLZANO had defined a class of series:
"... which possess the p r o p e r t y t h a t the variation (increase or decrease) which
their value suffers through a prolongation Eof terms] as far as desired remains
always smaller t h a n a certain value, which again can be t a k e n as small as one
wishes, if one has already prolonged the series sufficiently f a r " , 1~ and then he
proved t h a t for series with this property,
"... there always exists a certain constant value, and certainly only one,
which the terms of this series always approach the more, and towards which t h e y
can come as close as desired, if one prolongs the series sufficiently f a r . " ~ CAUCHY
stated t h a t :
" F o r the series 1u, to be convergent it is yet necessary t h a t for increasing
values of n the different sums

u~ + u ~ + 1 +u~+~
~C . . . . .

... finish b y constantly achieving numerical values smaller t h a n a n y assignable

limit. Reciprocally, when these various conditions are fulfilled, the convergence
of the series is assured. ''18
In other words, t h e y both found a general condition for convergence in terms
of the behaviour of (s,+~--s~) as n tended to infinity: a result of quite profound
originality. Contrary to general belief, BOLZANO in fact only asserted the suffi-
ciency of the condition in his paper; his proof is v e r y difficult to follow even with
the ideas of his new analysis, and in fact is faulty. The necessity of the condition
is far easier to recognise a n d prove: CAUCltY did prove it, b u t then avoided diffi-
culties b y hinting t h a t sufficiency followed as a consequence (which it does not !) :
" t h e sums s~, s~+ 1 . . . . differ from the limit s, and consequently among them-
salves, b y infinitely small quantities. ''19
2.3. Bolzano's Main Theorem. The t h e o r e m which BOLZANO actually proved in
his paper was the following generalisation of the t h e o r e m of his title:
Let /:(x) and ]~(x) be continuous functions for which /: (~) < /2 (*¢) and
]1 (/5) > ]~ (/5) : then ]1 (a) = ]~ (a) for at least one value a of x between c~ and/5. (The
basic theorem is the case where in (x) ~ 0.)
As a theorem it is most untypical of its time: t h a t is, a general theorem con-
cerning the properties of functions was not the kind of result then being sought
in analysis. ]3OLZANO himself saw it rather as a theorem in the theory of equations,
as a companion to GAUSS'S recent proofs of the decomposition of a polynomial

Beweis, art. 5.
lS B . BOLZANO,
Beweis, art. 7.
17 t3. BOLZANO,
is A.-L. CAUCHY, Gouts, t24--125 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 115--116.
19 A.-L. CAOCHY, Cours, 125 =Oeuvres, (2) 3, 115. My italics.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 377

i n t o linear a n d q u a d r a t i c factors. ~° CAucltY saw it as a t h e o r e m of t h e n e w anal-

ysis, a n d p u t i t twice i n t o t h e Cours d'Analyse (in its r e s t r i c t e d form): firstly
w i t h a naive g e o m e t r i c a l a r g u m e n t , a n d later, in t h e p a r t of his b o o k r e s e r v e d
for those w i t h a special i n t e r e s t in analysis, w i t h a c o n d e n s a t i o n a r g u m e n t which
seems v e r y m u c h like an unrigorous version of t h e i n t r i c a t e proof d e v e l o p e d in
B O L Z A N O ' S p a p e r . ~1

2.4. Bolzano's L e m m a . A crucial l e m m a r e q u i r e d b y BOLZA?¢O t o establish t h e

existence of t h e real root was t h e following l e m m a :
" I f a p r o p e r t y M does n o t a p p l y to all values of a v a r i a b l e q u a n t i t y x, b u t
to all those which are smaller t h a n a certain u : so t h e r e is a l w a y s a q u a n t i t y U
which is t h e largest of those of which it can be a s s e r t e d t h a t all smaller x possess
t h e p r o p e r t y M . " 32
W i t h this e x t r a o r d i n a r y t h e o r e m came a n o t h e r n e w i d e a into analysis, com-
p l e t e l y u n t y p i c a l of its t i m e : t h e upper limit of a sequence of values. I t is n o t to
be f o u n d e x p l i c i t l y in CAlJCltY'S Cours d'Analyse, b u t i n s t e a d we h a v e t h e r e a
f r e q u e n t use of phrases like " . . . t h e largest value of t h e expression . . . " when
c a l c u l a t i n g l i m i t i n g values, especially in connection w i t h t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of
tests for convergence of a series. ~3 As w i t h c o n t i n u i t y of a function, CAUCltY was
r e v e a l i n g l y o n l y p a r t i a l l y aware of t h e significance of t h e idea; for he used i t
only as a tool for developing t h e proofs of his p a r t i c u l a r t h e o r e m s a n d n o t as a
p r o f o u n d device for i n v e s t i g a t i n g m o r e s o p h i s t i c a t e d p r o p e r t i e s of analysis.
Therefore it w o u l d be especially surprising if it were CAUCHY'S own i n v e n t i o n :
n o t u n t i l t h e t860's was i t i n t r o d u c e d again a n d p r o p e r l y used, b y t h e WEIER-
STRASS school of analysts. 2~

2.5. The Real Number System. L a s t l y , a p o i n t which is less s t r i k i n g t h a n the

others b u t w o r t h m e n t i o n i n g : t h e considerations given in b o t h works to t h e real
numbers. I n t h e course of p r o v i n g his l e m m a as well as in o t h e r p a r t s of his p a p e r
BOLZANO h a d recourse to e x t e n d e d considerations of real n u m b e r s , especially
r e g a r d i n g t h e r a t i o n a l or i r r a t i o n a l l i m i t i n g values of sequences of certain finite
series of rationals. ~ I n l a t e r m a n u s c r i p t s he e x t e n d e d these r e m a r k s into a full
t h e o r y of r a t i o n a l a n d i r r a t i o n a l n u m b e r s of t h e t y p e which, like continuous non-
differentiable functions a n d t h e t h e o r e m on u p p e r limits, was n e x t i n v e s t i g a t e d

s0 K. F. GAuss, "Demonstratio nova altera ..." and "Theorematis de resolubitate

• ..", Comm. Soe. Reg. Sci. Gdttingen Rec., 3 (t814--15: publ. t816), cl. math., 107--134,
and t33--142 = Werke, 3, 31--56, and 57--64.
2~ A.-L. CAUCHY, Cours, 43--44 and 46(>--462 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 50--5 t and 378--380.
22 ]3. ]~OLZANO, Beweis, art. 12.
23 See especially the sections on convergence tests in chs. 6 and 9 of the Cours.
2~ There is a distinction between ]3OLZANO'S introduction of an upper limit and
CAuc~Y'S "largest value of the expression ...", in t h a t CAUCHY actually used the
Limes of a sequence (whose every neighbourhood contains members of the sequence),
while BOLZANOdefined the upper limit (which does not necessarily have this property) ;
b u t we cannot interpret this distinction as intentional in ]~OLZANO and CAUCHY'S
time and I do not know of a n y recorded awareness of it then. F o r a brief discussion
of the point, see P. E. ]3. JOURDAIN, "On the general theory of functions," fourn, rei.
ang. Math., 128 (1905), 169--210 (pp. t85--t88).
25 ]3. BOLZANO, Beweis, art. 8: see also art. t2.
26 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci,, Vol. 6
378 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS:

only b y WEIERSTRASS and his followers. Is CAUCHY wrote just once on the real
number system: it was in the Cours d'Analyse, where he gave a superficial formal
exposition of the real number system. The initial stimulus for this work was
foundational questions concerning the representation of complex numbers; but
he took the development of the ideas well into BOLZANO'S territory, twice in-
cluding the remark that "when B is an irrational number, one can obtain it b y
rational numbers with values which are brought nearer and nearer to i t " 37 _
merely a remark on a property of the real numbers and not as a definition of the
irrational number in the sense of the later work, as has sometimes been thought.
Once again CAUCHY did not fully appreciate the depth of BOLZANO'S thought;
and yet it is clear from his partial success that he was aware of ]3OLZANO'Sideas,
rather than from his partial failure that he was ignorant of them. The striking
feature of this remark, as with his interpretation of continuity and his only
incomplete use of the upper limit, is that it is there at all, rather than that it appears
in a mutilated form.

3. The New Analysis

Thus we find a significant collection of unusual results in the two works: yet
there is a much stronger and more profound link between them, which cannot
be identified b y means of precise quotations or references - - namely, a unity o/
approach. We have here a good example of the rule that the whole is greater than
the sum of the parts, for it is the homogeneity and general applicability of these
new ideas which is their most significant feature. The term "arithmeticisation of
analysis" is given to them, because they operate b y means of arithmetical dif-
ferences and proofs within the analysis are based on the arithmetical mani-
pulation of them; but I do not favour this name, partly because it is identified
with the later WEIERSTRASSIAN developments of analysis but principally because
the arithmeticisation is only at the service of something more profound: the
theory of limit-avoidance.
When we speak of "introducing the concept of a limit" into analysis, we are
actually introducing limit-avoidance, where the limiting value is defined b y the
property that the values in a sequence avoid that limit b y an arbitrarily small
amount when the corresponding parameter (the index n for the sequence s~ of
n th partial sums, say, or the increment ~ in the difference (/(x +~)--/(x)) for
continuity) avoids its own limiting value (infinity and zero, in these examples).
The new analysis formed in ]3OLZANO'S pamphlet and developed in CAUCHY'S
text-books was nothing else than a complete reformulation of the whole of
analysis in limit-avoidance terms, terms which CAUCHY made quite explicit in
the introduction to the Cours d'analyse:
"When the values successively attributed to a particular variable approach
indefinitely a fixed value, so as to finish b y differing from it b y as little as one
wishes, this latter is called the limit of all the others." 2s

2s These manuscripts were published in K. RYCHLIK(ed.), Theorie der reellenZahlen

im Bolzanos handschriitlichen Nachlasse (1962, Prague).
27 A.-L. CAUCHY, Cours, 409 and 4t5 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 337 and 341.
2s A.-L. CAUCHY, Cours, 4 ~-Oeuvres, (2) 3, 19.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 379

One important aspect of limit-avoidance is that it is independent of the contin-

uum of values over which the analysis is conducted. Limit-avoidance can be
developed whether an infinitesimal or non-infinitesimal field is being used: the
use of the WEIERSTRASSIAN term "arithmeticisation of analysis", applied to the
period when WEIERSTRASS excluded infinitesimals from analysis, has led us to
forget that its limit-avoiding character was shown also b y the earlier period
instigated b y BOLZANO,who used both types of continuum in his analysis, 29
and CAucrI¥, who practiced only infinitesimals throughout his mathematical
career. Since WEIERSTRASS'S time, we have held a fairly contemptuous view of the
infinitesimalists which I regard as unfair. A remarkable amount of pure and
applied analysis was developed from the time of NEWTON onwards with the aid
of infinitesimals; but there were important foundational difficulties involved in
their use, and in fact CAUCHY is a good example of them. These difficulties seem
to me to lie especially in the foundations of the calculus, which if we examine
from the point of view of limit-avoidance also reveal the attraction that in-
finitesimals must have had to the founders of the algebraic calculus.
We make our point in the LEIBI~IZIAX notation, which not only became the
standard system but also contained a key to the difficulties that the infinitesimal-
ists faced. When we calculate the derivative b y means of the definition

dY-=D~ "h~o
dx lim[ /-(x+h)--/(x) ' (2)

we m a y quite easily obtain the value of the derivative involved; but we are left
with the important foundational question of how t h a t value is obtained in light
0
of the fact that the ratio on the right hand side of (2) becomes ~- when h = 0.
The virtue of infinitesimals, quantities which obeyed the law

a +h=a (3)
of addition to the " o r d i n a r y " numbers, was that, being non-zero they avoided
the limiting value and therefore the difficulty of ~-;
0 on the other hand, being
smaller than " a n y assignable q u a n t i t y " (that is, any non-infinitesimal), they
effectively allowed the limit to be taken. This view was of course an inconsistent
one, but I think that it lay basically behind infinitesimalist reasoning and was
the source of its difficulties. The infinitesimal was either zero or non-zero,
according to the needs of the moment: thus it could be added to or withdrawn
from any quantity in an equation, with the presumed certainty of leaving the
mathematical situation described b y that equation undisturbed. We m a y see
this as a double-interpretation for the infinitesimal -- a limit-avoiding inter-
pretation as a non-zero quantity, and what we m a y call b y contrast a "limit-
achieving" interpretation as an essentially zero quantity allowing the limit to
be taken. From this distinction there follows a corresponding double-inter-
29 In the Beweis ]3OLZANOdid not explicitly discuss the possible continua, and
seemed to have allowed the use of infinitesimals; but later in the year he published
another pamphlet, on Die drei Probleme der Recti/ication, der Complanation und die
Cubirung, ohne Betrachtung des unendlich Kleinen . . . . und ohne irgend eine nicht s~reng
erweisliche Voraussetzung gel6st; ... (t817, P r a g u e ) = Schri/ten, 5 (t948, Prague),
67--138.
26*
380 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS:

dy
pretation of d x ' Let us take a specific example of a derivative, say for the
function
y = xL (3)
whose derivative
dy
dx = 3 x2 (4)
is calculated from
dy
d. =Dr.
lim[ (X+h)8--x3 ] • (5)
k~o t k

When h achieves its limiting value zero (4) gives us the value of the derivative,
dy
and so the denoting symbol ~ is in fact just a symbol and is not to be taken as
an arithmetical ratio " d y + d x " . Thus it is not valid to multiply through (4) by
dx to obtain
dy = 3 x2dx. (6)

(6) follows from (4) b y turning from the limit-achieving interpretation of dd--~-Yxas

a whole symbol to its limit-avoiding interpretation, where it is the r a t i o " d'y +dx".
For if we avoid the limiting value b y the non-zero infinitesimal quantity dx, then
we see from the right hand side of (5) that the situation for the increment dy
(=d(x~)) is given by
dy = 3 x~ dx + q, (7)

where q is a second-order infinitesimal obeying the law

a+q=a (8)

of addition to ,, ordinary" or first-order infinitesimal quantities a. -d7

dy in this
kind of situation, if we wish to consider it, could arise by dividing throughout (7)
to give:
dy q
a. - 3 x~ + d . ' (9)

a result of a [undamentally di//erent kind [rom (4). There is a difference between

the two far greater than the first order infinitesimal ~~q~7.:
t9
we see a basic qualitative
dy appears in (4) as a limit-achieving symbol but in (9) as a limit-
difference, for dk-x
avoiding ratio. Further, the deduction of (9) from an infinitesimal equation (7)
is not necessary to the derivation of (4). For let us suppose that we change con-
tinua so that in WEIERSTRASSIAN style we reject the use of infinitesimals. Then
(4) and (5) still stand (with the limit now of course taken over the non-infinitesi-
mal field); but (7) and all its consequences, such as (9), disappear altogether
for (7) itself changes into tile identity

o=o, (1o)

whether or not it was true in the infinitesimal continuum.

 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 381

The ideas that I have presented here are essentially straightforward, and are
susceptible of considerable extension; but they are independent of the modern
interest in developing a consistent theory of infinitesimals. 8° They do not them-
selves establish a consistent infinitesimalism but at least show that much can
be clarified in terms which could have been understood and developed in the
infinitesimalist period. Yet they were far from the considerations of the time: in
particular, CAUCHY'S treatment of the foundations of the calculus was as in-
coherent and incompetent as any that were ever offered. In his Rdsumd des
le9ons ... sur le calcul in/initdsimal of 1823, the next instalment of his new anal-
ysis after the Cours d'Analyse, he explicitly rejected LAGRANGE'S faith in
TAYLOR'S series, but he replaced it with an extraordinary theory of the derivative
which made simultaneous use of both LAGRANGE'S theory of derived functions
/' ( x ) , / " ( x ) , ... and also of CARNOT'S theory of differentials dx, ddx, ... : infini-
tesimals not only achieved the limit in CAUCHY'S system but they also avoided it,
at times b y non-infinitesimal amounts, changing their role with every appearance
of new and usually unnecessary notation. 31 However, when CAUCHY came to
integration he was wonderfully successful, laying out the whole basic structure
of the theory of the "CAucH¥ integral" (defined in terms of the area as the
limit of a sum) in a masterly display of the power of the new analysis of limit-
avoidance.
This is what the new analysis was: only in limit-avoidance terms can its full
power and subtlety be appreciated, and theorems such as the necessary and
sufficient condition for convergence in the diminishing of ( s ~ + ~ - s,) - - where the
limit s is avoided altogether - - and BOLZANO'S theorem on the existence of upper
limits, can be seen to their best advantage. Yet to understand BOLZANO and
CAUCH¥'S work we must look at the old as well as the new. W h a t sort of analysis
had they replaced ?

4. The Old Analysis

We have referred earlier briefly to certain features of t8 th century analysis,
and it is appropriate now to make more detailed remarks about its character.
In speaking of the " o l d analysis", we are referring only to the subject immedi-
ately prior to BOLZANOand CAUCHY'Swork; and we find that m a n y of its features
were the result of problems in other areas of mathematics, especially in the
solution of difference and differential equations. Following the leadership of
EULER, his contemporaries (mainly D'ALEMBERT, DANIEL BERNOULLI and
LAGRANGE) and successors (mainly LAGRANGE, LAPLACE and MONGE) had
developed a wide range of solution methods. I t is impossible to describe them all
in a sentence, but often they involved the construction of exact differentials
prior to integration to give functional solutions, or assumptions of particular
kinds of solution which led via the conditions of the problem to auxiliary equa-

30 See A. ROBINSON, Non-Standard Analysis (t966. Amsterdam); and also the

work initiated by C. SCHMEIDEN6: D. LAUGWITZ," E i n e Erweiterung tier Infinitesimal-
rechnung", Math. Zeitschr., 69 (1958), 1--39.
31 A.-L. CAucI-I¥, Rdsumd des lemons donndes ~ l'Ecole Royale Polytechnique sur le
calcul in]initdsimal. Tome premier (1823, P a r i s ) = Oeuvres, (2) 4, 5--26t. No other
volumes were published: see here lecture 5.
 382 I. GRATTAI~-GuINNESS:

tions. The analytical techniques themselves - - which involved not only dif-
ferentiation and integration, but also summation and rearrangement of series
(especially power series), manipulations of algebraic expressions, the taking of
limiting cases (in moving from difference to differential equations for example),
and so on - - were normally used as required without consideration of their
validity. This is not intended as a criticism, but merely a general statement of
the situation: it led to an enormous range of results in pure and applied mathe-
matics which have remained important ever since. Further, there were cases when
questions of rigour and validity did arise, of which the most important was the
problem of the motion of the vibrating string; 32 but ill general the situation at
the beginning of the 19 ~ century was that not only were such considerations
relatively limited but the techniques themselves were susceptible of, and received,
plenty of further development without concern for the rigour involved. This is a
m a t t e r of great importance when considering the " n e w analysis" of BOLZANO
and CAUCHY. Their new foundations, based on limit avoidance, certainly swept
away the old foundations, founded largely on faith in the formal techniques; but
it would be a mistake of posterior wisdom to assume that old foundations had
been in a serious and comprehensive state of decay and were recognised as such
b y those who were using them. Historians of science seem to be only too ready
to make assumptions of this kind when considering "revolutions" in science:
they also tend to identify anticipations of a new system in the old one with that
new system instead of what they probably were, something else in the old system
which was quite different and also interesting. The historiographical point here
is the danger of determinism; that because a body of knowledge developed in a
particular way, then it must be viewed historically as having been capable of
developing only t h a t way, certainly from the intellectual point of view and per-
haps even chronologically. Yet in fact any situation is always open to a variety
of future developments: we must not allow the intermediate historical processes
that actually happened to distort our vision of the situation from which they
started.
I have already claimed that the new analysis replaced an old analysis which
does not seem to have needed such a radical replacement: from the point of view
of the BOLZANo-CAucHY question, it follows that it is all the more surprising that
exactly the same type of replacement began to emerge twice within four years.
But we must consider also the anticipations of the new system ill the old one.
The " n e w analysis" laid great stress on the rigour of processes: did no "old
analyst" t r y to do the same ? Yes, certainly, but not ill any way resembling the
comprehensive and homogeneous character of the new method: they had other
ideas which were quite different and also interesting. EULER tried hard, though
with little practical success, to produce a consistent infinitesimalism in his
"reckoning with zeros", including consideration of different orders of infinitesi-
mal. D'ALEMBERT tended to distrust infinitesimals altogether, while LAGRANGE
tried to avoid all limiting processes b y defining the derivatives of a function in

82 For a discussion of foundational questions in the light of this problem, see my

Foundations, Ch. t ; and for an extended account of the solution of differential equa-
tions ill this period, see C. TRUESDELL, The rational mechanics o[ flexible or elastic
bodies 1638--1788, L. Euleri Opera Omnia, (t) 11, pt. 2 (196o, Zurich).
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 383

terms of the coefficients of its expansion as a TAYLol~ series. This was "limit-
avoidance" of a completely different and considerably less successful kind, and
it won few supporters. One of them, however, was ARBOGAST, WhO tried towards
the end of the century to reduce the number of distinctions between types of
function to a group based on analytical rather than algebraic or mechanical
considerations. L'I-IuILIER offered a thoughtful essay on the taking of limits:
I am sure that CAISCHYread it, for he always used the notation " l i m " for a
limiting value which L'HuILIER introduced there. But I doubt if he learnt much
more from it, for the results obtained are severely limited, being concentrated on
the derivative and often providing no more than a re-writing of known ideas.
L'HIJILIEI~ also criticised (with iustice) EULEI~'S use of infinitesimals, and CARNOT
took it further into a profound essay on orders of the infinitely small and the
interpretation of the LEIBNIZIAN notations as infinitesimals. But perhaps the
best example, especially from the point of view of anticipations of BOLZAI~Oand
CAUCHY, iS LACROIX, the principal text-book writer of the day. He was not an
important creative mathematician, but he was capable of some measure of
appreciation of contemporary work and he read exhaustively among the earlier
literature. I referred earlier to his understanding of convergence of series as a
general problem, which he learnt from D'ALEMBERT'S vague warnings against
divergent series in the t760's: he also gave in t806 a formulation of continuity
vaguely similar to that of BOLZANOand CAucI~Y.3~ Thus we m a y say that LACROlX
anticipated them if we wish; yet it would be more misleading than illuminating
to do so, not least to the understanding of LACROIX'S results. For one cannot
find in LACROIX'S writings the general aim that BOLZANO and CAI~CI~Yachieved,
not even in the new editions of his works that continued to appear after CAUCI-IY'S
text-books were published.
What would have happened if CAUCH¥ had not read BOLZANO? Without
doubt, foundational questions would have received discussion, but it seems to
me most unlikely that the radical reform that in fact happened would have taken
place: rather only parts of that theory would probably have emerged, especially
in the convergence of series and the integral as the limit of a sum, while the rest,
apparently sound enough, would have received well-meaning but limited ex-
amination. But in order to put the old and the new analyses into better perspective
we must describe some of the fundamental problems which were current before
BOLZANO'S paper; and at the same time we shall pass on to further aspects of
the CAUCHY-BoLZANOquestion, aspects which involve not only analysis itself
but also the Paris in which CAUCHY was working and the way in which his
mathematical genius was inspired.

~ S. ~'. LACROIX, Traitd dldmentaire du calcul intdgral (2nd edition; 1806, Paris):
see art. 60. The other works to which we referred explicitly were L. F. A. ARBOGAST,
Mdmoire sur la nature des/onctions arbitraires qui ent~ent dam les intdgvales des dquations
aux diHdrentielles partielles (t 791, St. Petersburg) : S. L'HuILIER, Exposilion dldmentaire
des principes des calculs supdrieures (1786, Berlin), esp. chs. I and a I ; and L. N. M.
CARNOT, Re/lexions suv la mdtaphysique du calcul in/initdsimale (1st edition: 1797,
Paris. 2nd edition: 1813, Paris). On EULER'S and LAGRANGE'Sviews on analysis, see
A. P. JUSCI-IKEWITSCI-I, Euler and Lagrange ~ber die Grundlagen der Analysis," Sam-
'"

melband der zu Ehren des 250. Geburtstages Leonhard Eulers (ed. K. SCI-IRODER:1959,
Berlin), 224--244; and on all these and other developments, m y Foundations, chs. 1 and 3.
384 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS:

8. Cauchy's Originality as a Mathematician

If CAUCHYcame to his new ideas independently of BOLZANO, then he perceived
a completely novel approach to analysis and detected its superiority over known
techniques which themselves were not lacking in power or generality. This kind
of achievement is characteristic of certain mathematicians: it reflects their sen-
sitive "intuition for problems", their ability to see far beyond contemporary
work into totally new ways of solving current problems, or even of forming new
problems of which others were hardly aware. GAuss is a prime example of such
a thinker, with his notebooks already filled with the seeds of most t9 th century
mathematics within its first decade: ]3OLZANO shows this ability, too, and to
the extent that he was in fact extremely limited in ability at " o r t h o d o x " devel-
opments of current and popular methods. Thus in i8t6, for example, before the
flood of his own new thinking, he published a treatise on the binomial series in
the style of the old analysis which is really quite remarkably uninteresting) 4 But
CAUCHY is a good example of originality of another kind, lacking such sensitivity
and feeling for new problems but, when stimulated by the achievements or
especially lack o/success in some contemporary work, would expand the accom-
plished fragments into immense generalisations and extensions within the same
field of research. His monument in mathematics in his theory of functions of a
complex variable and their integration, one of the great achievements of all 19 th
century mathematics. Its origins are to be found in a large paper of t814 (his
25 th year) on the validity of using complex numbers in the evaluation of definite
integrals. The technique had been used for decades from time to time, without
much consideration of its validity: in particular, in June 18t4, LEGENDI~E
published an instalment of the second volume of his Exercises du calcul intdgral,
a work containing various methods of evaluating definite integrals whose main
aim was towards the development of his theory of elliptic integrals. 35 This instal-
ment concerned itself chiefly with integrals whose integrands were the product
of rational and trigonometric functions, and it provided the spark for CAUCI~Y'S
fire, for from LEGENDRE'Swork CAUCHYcame to the following generalised problem
concerning the evaluation of definite integrals: what are sufficient conditions for
the validity of using complex variables in such evaluations ? His solution was the
equality of two mixed partial differentials:

oxOy l(z)dz-- Oy~x /(z)dz, (1t)

where z is a complex function of x and y;
z=h(x, y) +ik(x, y) (12)
and thus
/(z) =~,(x, y ) + i v ( x , y). (13)
From this fruitful equation (t 1) stemmed a variety of general theorems (including
the "Cauchy-Riemann equations") and thence hosts of particular integrals,
34 ]~. :BOLZANO,Der binomische Lehrsatz and als Folgerung aus ihm der Polynomische
und die Reihen . . . . (1816, Prague). The most interesting section is on pp. 27--40.
85 A.-M. LEGENDRE, Exercises du calcul inl@ral sur divers ordres des hombres trans-
cendantes el sur les quadratures (3 vols: 1811--t 7, Paris).
 ]3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 385

including the evaluation of some of LEGENDRE'S. CAUCHYpresented his paper in

August (18t4) to the Institut de France, and LEGENDRE was one of its examiners:
he rightly praised its many important new results, but had a most interesting and
important dispute with CAUCHYover the evaluation of
oo

f xcosax dx (t4)
• si~b~ t + x~ "
0

a
Put in modern terms, if we regard the integral as a function of ~- then it has a
discontinuity of magnitude ~ at the odd multiple values of its argument. CAVCHY
had b y separate equations evaluated the left- and right-hand limiting values of
a a
the function for ~- < t a n d s - > t" but in the t814 instalment of his book LEGE~-
DI~E had used a power series expansion method on a generalisation of (t4) to
produce in a limiting case the arithmetic mean of CAUCHY'S two evaluations for
a
b - - t , and he could not understand that this new type of algebraic expression
- the integral representation -- could in fact give a discontinuous function.
-

CAUCHY produced a spurious piece of infinitesimal reasoning to resolve the

situation to LEGENDRE'S satisfaction; 36 but it must have shown him that there
were foundational questions in real variable analysis apart from the use of
complex numbers with which he would have to deal.
Let us return, however, to the question of CAUCHY'S type of mathematical
inspiration. We see in this episode that CAUCHY was directly stimulated b y
LEGENDRE'S attempts at integral evaluation to work in exactly the same field,
rather than to intuite from it some more general and abstract kind of problem
concerned with the use of functions of a complex variable. In the t814 paper for
example, the theory of singularities and residues which he was to produce in
later years was given in a real variable integral form, which we m a y write as:
Y~ ~¢2 X~ Y2

f f o,
Yl J('l
~7-x d x d y - - .
X1
ff Yl
,
-~x d y d x = .
0
f ES(X + p , Y +q) (t5)

- - S ( X + p , Y - - q ) -- S ( X - - p , Y +q) + S ( X - - p , Y - - q ) ] d p ,
os
where ~ has an infinity at the point (X, Y) inside the rectangle bounded by
the sides, x = x1, x = x 2, y = yl and y = Y2.3~ His later fine achievements in the
new analysis with the theory of integration may be traced in large part to the
issues involved in the profound result (15).
In the following year of 18t5 CAVC~IYhad another large paper ready, this
time on the propagation of water-waves. 3s Complex variables were again present,

3n For a full account of this episode see my Foundations, ch. 2.

a7 CAucH¥'s paper was "M6moire sur les int6grales d6finies", Mdm. prds. A cad.
Roy. Sci. div. say., (2) 1 (1827), 60t--799 =Oeuvres, (1) 1, 31 9---506. LEaENI)RE'S
evaluation of tile integral (t4) is in his as, 2, t24.
~s A.-L. CAucI~¥, "Ttl~orie de la propagation des ondes ~ la surface d'nn fluide
pesant d'une profondeur ind6finie," Mdm. prds. Acad. Roy. Sci. div. say., (2) 1 (1827),
3--3t2 = Oeuvres, (1) 1, 4--318.
386 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS:

as they were to be in all of his mathematical output; and integrals were also to
be found, for the prominent new feature here was tile use of integral methods to
solve linear partial differential equations (and thus to use again the integral
representation of a function). The inspiration in this case is not so easy to trace,
as it is impossible to say how much of FOURIER'S then still unpublished work on
heat diffusion he had seen; but he knew of POlSSON'S (lesser) work in the same
field, and doubtless he was aware of some results of LAPLACE which we shall
discuss later. At all events, in 18t 7 his further researches brought him to "Fou-
rier's Integral T h e o r e m " :
oo oo

/(x) =
0 0

in a short paper whose rushed and excited tone suggests that he had really found
the result independently of FOURIER.39 FOURIER acquainted him with his own
prior discovery of the theorem, and then CAUCHY certainly did read his manu-
scripts: not only did he publish an acknowledgement in 1818, 40 but in all his
later work on integral solutions to partial differential equations there was a new
confidence and dexterity, and again -- extensions and generalisations (to multiple
integral solutions, and so on) of what FOURIER had already done. 41
And then we come to t 82t and tile Cours d'Anatyse: large numbers of theorems
on all aspects of real and complex variable function theory, based on the ideas
which we listed in our section 2. From where had the inspiration come this time ?
From within CAucI~= himself ? Perhaps; but it is so utterly untypical of his kind
of achievement whereas under the hypothesis of his prior reading of BOLZANO it
is SO perfect an example of it, that it seems difficult not to accept the latter
possibility. Perhaps I can best illustrate the force of this point b y describing m y
own researches into the development of the foundations of analysis during this
period. I had started naturally enough with CAUCHY'S Cours d'Analyse and his
other contributions to analysis, and in the course of reading other of his writings
his need for an initial external stimulus to his genius had become clear to me.
Thus I wanted to find the source of the new ideas of the Cours d'Analyse, and so
I made a special search of all of CAOCHY'S work written prior to 182t. I found
m a n y important things, especially the 18t 4 integrals paper and the disagreement
over (t4) with LECENDRE, and the affair of 1817 over FOU~IER'S Integral Theo-
rem (16): there was clearly plenty of motivation for CAUCHY to t r y to improve
analytical techniques. But of the new ideas that were to achieve that aim -- of
them, to m y great surprise, I could find nothing. Only later did I follow up m y
knowledge that BOLZANO had done " s o m e t h i n g " in analysis which no-one had
read (or so I thought) ; and I can remember quite clearly the extraordinary effect
of reading BOLZANO'S 18t7 pamphlet and seeing the Cours d'Analyse emerging
from its pages. I then re-read the Cours d'Analyse and found the fine details of
3 . A.-L. CAUCHY, "Sur une loi de r6ciprocit6 qui existe entre certaines fonctions",
Bull. Sci. Soc. Philom. Paris (1817), 121--124 = Oeuvres, (2) 2, 223--227.
~0 A.-L. CAucI~Y, "Second note sur les fonctions r6ciproques", Bull. Sci. Soc.
Philom. Paris (t8t8), 178--181 = Oeuvres, (2) 2, 228--232.
4, For discussion of these developments, see my Fourier, chs. 21 and 22; and
BURKHARDT 3a, chs. 8--11 passim.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 387

correspondence; but more than that, I could see CAlsCI~Y'Smind at work in its
own individual way, taking the fragments of BOLZANO'Sthought as he had taken
LEGENDRE'S morsels and FOURIER'S substantial achievements earlier, and pro-
ducing from them whole new systems of mathematical thought.
But if CAUCHYowed so much to BOLZANO,why did he not acknowledge him ?
To answer this question, we move more fully into the social situation of the time:
to Paris, the centre of the mathematical world.

6. The State of Parisian Mathematics

Almost every mathematician of note at this time either lived in or at ]east
visited Paris. One consequence of this galaxy of brilliance was that a state of
intense rivalry and sometimes bitter enmity existed almost continuously in the
Parisian scientific circles. Everybody was affected by it, although some less
than others; and the reasons were not always purely scientific. There were deep
and passionate political or religious disagreements, too, heightened b y the Napo-
leonic era and its violent end and brief resurrection in the mid-t810's. These
rivalries pose an exciting and difficult problem for the historian of the period,
for their detection and description calls for the most careful reading of even the
finest point in the most obscure paper, as well as reading between the lines of
all the scientific literature of the time. Very little work has been done on these
rivalries: indeed, most historians have failed to notice them altogether. 4~ But
perhaps I can give some idea of how they affected the situation and bore especially
upon CAUCHY and his Cours d'Analyse by describing two of the most important
controversies of the time -- as fully as I have been able to disclose them.
We have mentioned FOURIER'S name several times, and the first controversy
involved his work on heat diffusion. Like GAUSS and BOLZANO, he also had a
strong intuition for new problems, and seemingly from about 1802 he began
work on the then novel study of the mathematical description of the diffusion
of heat in continuous bodies. His early work on the problem proceeded b y means
of a discrete n-body model, and though he achieved considerable mathematical
success a small hut vital error in the model itself brought failure to his efforts to
obtain a solution for the corresponding continuous bodies b y taking n to infinity.
Then he had a slight CAocI~v-like inspiration from a small paper of 1804 by BlOT
on the propagation of heat in a bar 43 to start again by forming the partial dif-
ferential equation directly, and in the brief periods of leisure allowed him in the
next three years from his duties as Prefect of Is~re at Grenoble and from his
Egyptological researches he created a genuine revolution of his own: a revolution
in mathematical physics, which he took beyond the realm of NEWTONIANmech-
anics into a new physical territory of heat diffusion, with its own equations and
physical constants and a fresh range of solution methods based on the use of
linear equations, the method of separation of variables (then mainly used in solving

42 An exception is YI. ]3URKI-IARDT33" for scattered remarks, see ch. 8 pctssim.

See also my Foundations, esp. chs. 2--5; and Fourier, esp. chs. 21 and 22.
~3 j. B. BLOT, "M6moire sur la propagation de la chaleur," Bibl. Brit., 27
(1804), 3t0--329 = fourn. Mines, 17 (t804), 203--224. FOURIERnever acknowledged
BLOT'S paper]
388 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS :

ordinary differential equations) and the superposition of special solutions. FOU-

RIER series were only one consequence of these new methods: another was his
creation of the basic theory of the misnamed "Bessel functions", and indeed it
was there that he showed his mathematical technique at its greatest. By 1807
he had progressed far; but he was unable to solve the problem of heat diffusiou
in an in/inite continuous body, and so he wrote up his theoretical achievements
and experimental results in a large monograph submitted to the Institut de
France in December ~4. LAGRANGE and LAPLACE were the most important of the
examiners: for various conceptual r e a s o n s LAGRANGE was opposed to the whole
approach based on separation of variables, but LAPLACE was very impressed and
began to take great interest in FOURIER'S work. So a struggle began over the
reception of FOURIER'S paper, with LAPLACE, FOURIER and MONGE (another
examiner, and personally close to FOURIER) in support, and opposition from
LAGRANGE and - - P O I S S O N .
We must consider POISSON for a moment, for in him more than in any other
single person lies the key to the Parisian mathematical rivalries. He graduated
brilliantly from the Ecole Polytechnique in t803, and to the aging grand masters
of Parisian mathematics - - LAGRANGE, LAPLACE, LEGENDRE and MONGE -- he
must have seemed to be the only heir to their crown: FOURIER was so occupied
with administrative work at Grenoble that he could not be expected to be
achieving substantial mathematical work, while CAUCHY was still only in his
early teens. So P o l s s o x was placed in a position of special favour from the
beginning of his career which he exploited to the full, especially b y means of
influential positions on Parisian scientific journals; but over the next twenty
years he gradually but steadily lost favour and reputation to FOURIER and then
CAUCHY as they emerged and surpassed him in the quality of their work. The
t807 paper of FOURIER was crucial in this development. B y 1805 or 1806 P o l s s o x
was already aware of some of FOURIER'S results and the type of solution t h a t he
was trying to develop: he replied not only b y applying to FOURIER'S diffusion
equation in t806 the ideas of LAGRANGE and LAPLACE on solutions of partial
differential equations using power series of functions, 45 but also b y publishing a
denigrating five-page review of FOURIER'S monograph in 1808 in a journal of
which he was mathematical editor. 4° However, LAPLACE, acting in his typical
political way, maintained his interest in POlSSON (and also in BLOT) while
gradually changing his interests towards FOURIER'S methods and results. In t809
he published a miscellany on analysis which - - without reference to FOURIER --
just happened to contain a treatment of the diffusion equation with initial condi-

~4 For the references of this manuscript, see 12; and for a detailed analysis of its
contents, see my "Joseph Fourier and the revolution in mathematical physics",
Journ. Inst. Maths. Applics., 5 (t 969), 230--253. Much new information on FOURIER'S
life and Prefectural responsibilities is contained in my Fourier, ch. t.
4~ S. D. POISSON, "M6moire snr les solutions particuli~res des 6quations diff6ren-
tielles et des 6quations aux diff6rences", Journ. Ec. Polyt., call. 13, 6 (1806), 60--116
(pp. 109--t11).
46 S. I). POlSSON, "M6moire sur la propagation de la chaleur darts les corps solides",
Nouv. Bull. Soc. Philom. Paris, 1 (1808), t t 2 - - t t6 ~ FOURIER'SOeuvres, 2, 2t 3--221.
 ]3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 389

tions over an infinite interval. His solution

oo

b r o u g h t into m a t h e m a t i c s a result which l a t e r was d e v e l o p e d as t h e " L a p l a c e

t r a n s f o r m " ; it m a y well h a v e been CAUCH¥'S i n s p i r a t i o n to t r y i n t e g r a l solutions
t o p a r t i a l differential equations. 4~ I t was c e r t a i n l y FOURIER'S inspiration, for i t
showed FOURIER t h a t an integral, r a t h e r t h a n a series, solution was a p p l i c a b l e in
t h e case of an infinite i n t e r v a l a n d it led h i m to "' F o u r i e r i n t e g r a l s " a n d t h u s to
his i n t e g r a l t h e o r e m (t6). Meanwhile, POlSSON h a d been o p p o s i n g FOURIER'S
solution m e t h o d in f a v o u r of f u n c t i o n a l solutions b y m e a n s of i n d i r e c t references
in t h e c o n t e x t of t h e v i b r a t i o n of elastic surfaces; 48 b u t FOURIER a n d his sup-
p o r t e r s e v e n t u a l l y m a n a g e d to secure a prize p r o b l e m for h e a t diffusion in t h e
Institut de France for J a n u a r y , 1812. To t h e revision of t h e m a n u s c r i p t of 1807
FOURIER a d d e d a new section on FOURIER integrals, a n d also two m o r e new p a r t s
on p h y s i c a l aspects of h e a t which were i n s p i r e d b y discussions w i t h LAPLACE.
H e won t h e prize, b u t t h e criticisms of LAGRANGE in t h e e x a m i n e r s ' r e p o r t h u r t
h i m for t h e rest of his life:
" . . . This w o r k contains t h e true differential e q u a t i o n s of t h e t r a n s m i s s i o n of
h e a t , b o t h in t h e i n t e r i o r of t h e bodies a n d a t t h e i r surface, a n d t h e n o v e l t y of
t h e p u r p o s e a d j o i n e d to its i m p o r t a n c e has d e t e r m i n e d t h e class [of t h e Institut]
to crown this work, observing, however, t h a t t h e m a n n e r of a r r i v i n g at its
e q u a t i o n s is n o t free from difficulties a n d its analysis of i n t e g r a t i o n still leaves
s o m e t h i n g to be desired, b o t h r e l a t i v e to its g e n e r a l i t y a n d on t h e side of rigour. "4°
LAGRANGE d i e d in 1813; b u t p u b l i c a t i o n of this second p a p e r was no m o r e
l i k e l y t h a n its predecessor a n d so FOURIER wrote his b o o k on h e a t diffusion as
t h e t h i r d version of his work. I t d i d n o t a p p e a r u n t i l 1822, 5o h a v i n g been d e l a y e d
p a r t l y b y FOURIER'S own difficulties in d e v e l o p i n g t h e p h y s i c a l aspects of h e a t
(which he e v e n t u a l l y o m i t t e d a n d p r o m i s e d for a sequel which was n e v e r written) ;
a n d t h e t812 prize p a p e r d i d n o t a p p e a r u n t i l still later. 51 B y this t i m e FOURIER
47 p. S. LAPLACE, "M6moire sur divers points d'analyse", Journ. Ec. Polyt., cab. t 5,
8 (1809), 229---265 (pp. 235--244) = Oeuvres, 14, 178--214 (pp. 184--193).
4s See especially the preamble to a prize problem on this topic in Hist. cl. sci.
math. phys. Inst. Fr. (1808: publ. 1809), 235--24t. Obviously written b y POlSSON,
it extols the virtues of functional solutions to the wave equations - - in implied contrast
to FOURIER series solutions which were then available. I n controversial circumstances
(described in m y Fourier, ch. 2t), POlSSON read his own paper on the subject in 1814,
which was published as "M6moire sur les surfaces elastiques", Mdm. cL sci. math.
phys. Inst. Fr., (t812), pt. 2 (publ. t8t6), 167--225.
49 Published in FOURIER'S Oeuvres, 1, vii--viii. The manuscript is kept in the
Archives of the Acaddmie des Sciences, Paris.
FOURIER never allied himself closely to LAPLACE, and gave no acknowledgement
to LAPLACEin the prize paper. I t m a y be t h a t LAORANGE'Scontinued general opposition
was supplemented b y LAPLACIAN annoyance: the remarkable story of the relations
between LAPLACE and FOURIER from 1807 until the 1820's is described in m y Fourier,
chs. 21 and 22.
so j . ]3. J. FOURIER, Thdorie analytique de la chaleur (1822, Paris) = Oeuvres, 1.
51 j . ]3. J. FOtlRIER, "Th6orie du mouvement de la chaleur dans les corps solides",
Mdm. Acad. Roy. Sci., 4 (t819--20: publ. 1824), t85--555; and 5 (1821--22: publ.
t826), 153--246 = Oeuvres, 2, 3--94.
 390 I. GRATTAN-GuINNESS :

had risen to a strong political position, having been appointed sdcretaire perpdtuel
of the Acaddmie des Sciences in 182t; and then there developed the second of
our major controversies, which directly involved CAUCHY'S Cours d'Analyse --
the convergence problem of FOURIER series.
FOURIER series contain many of the problems which we tackle b y means of
the new analysis, but we have not yet described any of FOURIER'S work in that
field. The reason is that, although he understood all the basic analytical problems
-- convergence, the possibility of discontinuous functions, the integral as an
area -- before both BOLZANO and CAUCHY had begun their work, he was not
strongly attracted to pure analysis as a study and so did not develop his own
understanding to the extent of that which he was capable. ~2 Doubtless CAUC~IY
was aware of this fact, for in the Cours d'Analyse he put the following theorem:
P ~

" W h e n the different terms of the series [ ~ u~ are functions of the same
[--r=l J
variable x, continuous with respect to that variable in the vicinity of a particular
value for which the series is convergent, the sum of the series is also a continuous
function of x in the vicinity of that particular value."sa
The theorem is remarkable for its falsehood: it was known in its day to be
false, and indeed CAUCHYknew it was refuted when he put it in his book. But to
find the reasons why it was included, we must examine the type of counter-
examples which were then known. They were in fact FOURIER series:

/(x) = ½ ao + ~. (a, cos r x +b, sin rx), (18)

r=l
where
2v~

ao=~- If l(u)du, (19)

+~
a, = ~ /(u) cos r u d u , r = 1, 2 . . . . (20)

+=
b,---- I f /(u) s i n r u d u , r = 1, 2 . . . . . (2t)

The trigonometric functions are continuous, and so the series on the fight hand
side of (18) is covered by CAUCHY'S theorem: thus if [(x) is discontinuous, tile
series cannot be convergent to it. But FOURIER had produced several series of
discontinuous functions, and had shown by direct consideration of their n th
partial sums that they were convergent; and since t8t 5 POlSSOX had found that
he had had to abandon his belief in functional and power series solutions in favour
of FOURIER series solutions, and he had found similar examples also. So what was
CAUCHY'S purpose in stating his theorem ? There was of course an intellectual
aspect to it, for CAUCHY did have a proof: suffice it to say for now that the
52 I n t h e 1807 m a n u s c r i p t 1~, see arts. 4 2 - - 4 3 , 6 4 - - 7 4 : i n t h e 1811 p a p e r ~1, see
p a r t 1, 2 6 9 - - 2 7 3 a n d 3 0 4 - - 3 1 6 : i n t h e b o o k 50 ( m o s t l y w r i t t e n b y 1815), see a r t s .
1 7 7 - - I 79 a n d 2 2 2 - - 2 2 9 .
5a A.-L. CAUCHY, Cours, 1 3 1 - - t 3 2 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 120.
 t3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 39t

distinctions between modes of uniform and non-uniform convergence which

resolve the difficulty were not noticed b y a n y b o d y until the 1840's, t h a t CAUCHY'S
theorem h a d some role to play in their development, and t h a t shortly after-
wards, in his last years, he wrote a pathetic paper of his own on the subject
presenting the same t y p e of idea without a n y reference to recent work. 5~ B u t
on the personal side, there was a message to FOURIER and POlSSON between
the lines of his theorem: " y o u r trigonometric series m a y be v e r y interesting, b u t
do y o u have a general convergence proof for t h e m ? Do y o u r series not affront
the results of the new analysis ? "
The later developments of this rivalry read almost like a novel. 55 Briefly,
POISSON had already published a general proof in 1820 based on rather crude
manipulations of the " P o i s s o n integral"
+~

f 1 --
(1__p2)
2p cos (xI(~)
-- ~) +p2 d ~ ; 56 (22)

but, while he never abandoned it, it impressed few of his contemporaries. If

CAUCHY knew it when he wrote the Cours d'Analyse, then his theorem was
already a c o m m e n t on it; b u t in a short paper of 1826 on the convergence problem
he certainly showed his awareness of it. For he began t h a t paper with a version
of POISSON'S convergence proof based on (22) to produce the FOURIER series (18);
and then he remarked:
" T h e preceding series [(t8)] can be very usefully employed in m a n y circum-
stances. B u t it is i m p o r t a n t to show its convergence. ''5~
CAocltY'S own proof followed; and while it was of considerably better m a t h e -
matical calibre t h a n POISSON'S, it contained one vital flaw -- the false assumption

t h a t if u~--*v, as n tends to infinity, then 2 ur and 2 v~ converge together. T h a t

r=l r=l
this assumption is false was pointed out in a paper of t829 on the convergence
problem b y the y o u n g DIRICHLET. I n this masterpiece DIRICHLET showed the
power of the new analysis in producing the famous sufficient "Dirichlet condi-
tions" for the convergence of a FOURIER series to its function: t h a t it m a y have

5~ A.-L. CAUCHY, " N o t e sur les s6ries convergentes ...", C. R. Acad. Roy. Sci.,
36 (1853), 454--459 = Oeuvres, (1) 12, 30--36. For a detailed account of the intro-
duction of modes of convergence, see my Foundations, ch. 6. The relevance of CAUCHY'S
theorem in the Cours is especially connected with one paper important in the develop-
ment of modes of convergence: P . L . SEIDlgL'S "Note tiber eine Eigenschaff der
t~eihen, welche discontinuirlichen Functionen darstellen", Abh. Akad. Wiss. Mi~nich,
7 (t 847--49), m a t h : p h y s . KI., 381--393. This paper (by a pupil of DIRICHLET!) dealt
explicitly with that theorem in the light of discontinuous FOURIER series, and is more
than likely to have been the (unmentioned) inspiration of CAUCHY'S paper of five
years later.
55 A detailed description is given in my Foundations, eh. 5.
5 6 S.-D. PolssoN, "M6moire sur la mani~re d'exprimer les fonctions ..." Journ.

Ec. Polyt., cah. 16, 11 (1820), 417--489 (pp. 422--424).

57 A.-L. CAUCHY, "M6moire sur les d6veloppements des fonctions en s6ries p6riodi-
ques", Mdm. Acad. Roy. Sci., 6 (1823: puN. 1827), 603--6t2 (p. 606) = Oeuvres, (1) 2,
12--t9 (p. 14).
392 I. GRATTAN-GuINNESS :

a finite n u m b e r of discontinuities and turning values in an otherwise continuous

and monotonic course. 5s A n d his proof was a development of a sketched argument
in FOURIER'S book of 1822: he took an alternative form to FOURIER'S for the n th
partial sum of the series and applied to it a precise version of the proof t h a t
FOURIER h a d outlined) 9 Yet there was more than mathematics in DIRICHLET'S
paper, too, for during his visit to Paris in 1826 he formed such a close personal
a t t a c h m e n t to FOURIER t h a t his work on the convergence problem was a per-
sonal homage in FOORIER'S last years. However, he formed no close relationship
to CAUCHY: as well as pointing out the error in CAUCHY'S 1826 proof and finding
general convergence conditions which, in allowing discontinuities in the function
refuted CAOCHV'S 1821 theorem, he reported in his paper a presumably verbal
remark of CAUCHY'S on his t826 paper t h a t :
"The author of this work himself acknowledges t h a t his proof is defective for
certain functions for which, however, convergence is incontestable. ''8°
One can find CAUCHY'S reaction to DIRICHLET'S results if one looks carefully:
in 1833 CAUCHY published in French at Turin a summarised version of all his
t820's text-books (based on the lectures t h a t he had been giving there ill Italian),
and was careful to include his theorem from the Cours d'Analyse word for
word. 61
A n d so we return to ]3OLZANO and his Prague pamphlet. Is it a n y wonder
t h a t in an atmosphere like this CAUCHY made no acknowledgement to him ?
References were often not made (apart from honorific citations of the great
names of the past), either between members of the Paris cliques or outside t h e m ;
and even then t h e y were some times double-meant. For example, when CAUCHY
finally m a n a g e d to get his t 8 t 4 paper on definite integrals and the 1815 paper
on water-waves published in 1827 he introduced in 1825 some extra notes and
footnotes to the texts and introduced fawning references to the powerful secrdtaire
b
perpdtuel (FouRIER), especially with regard to his invention of the notation f to
represent the definite integral; he also inserted attacks on the declining POlSSON. 62
B u t there seems to me to be more specific reasons for CAUCtIY'S failure to acknowl-
edge ]3OLZANO. H e h a d appreciated the qualities of BOLZANO'S w o r k , and I think
t h a t he deliberately excluded references to an obviously obscure work in order
to prevent its acquaintance b y rivals such as P o l s s o ~ and FOURIER (and perhaps
others such as A~IP~RE). This is perhaps not a nice remark to make about CAUCHY
but it is all too justified, and indeed CAUCHV'S personality is worth our separate
attention.

5s p. G. LEJEUNE-DIRICHLET, " S u r la convergence des s6ries trigonometriques . . . " ,

Journ. rei. ang. Math., 4 (t829), t57--169 ---- Werke, 1, 117--132. DIRICI-ILET'Scontri-
butions to the new analysis in this and other works (described in m y Foundations,
ch. 5), surpass in my view any other of CAucnY'S successors - - including ABEL.
S9 See J. B. J. FOURIER5°, esp. art. 423.
s0 See P. G. L E J E U N E - D I R I C H L E T 5s, 157 = Werke, 1, 119.
61 A.-L. CAUCHY, Rdsumds Analytiques (t833, Turin), 46 = Oeuvres, (2) 10, 55--56.
6, For CAUCHY'Sacknowledgements to FOURIER, see 37, 623 = Oeuvres, (1) 1, 340;
and 30, 194 (omitted from Oeuvres, (1) 1, t97). For the attacks in 3s on PolssoN, see
pp. 187--188 = Oeuvres, (1) 1, 189--191.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 393

7. Cauchy's Personality
If CAUCHY was one of the greatest mathematicians of his time, he was one
of the most unpleasant personalities of all time: a fanatic for Catholic and Bour-
bonist causes to the point of perversion, he had to prove his superiority at all
times over even the weakest of his contemporaries and to publish a virtually
continuous stream of work. He also wrote articles on education, the rights of the
Catholic and Bourbon causes, and the reform of criminals, to supplement his
mathematical output; but he never helped and even at times hindered his
younger colleagues in their careers and work. A good example of this concerns a
young man who wrote the following of him:
" C a u c h y is a fool, and one can't find any understanding with him, although
he is the mathematician who at this time knows how mathematics should be
treated ... he is extremely catholic and bigoted . . . . "
The writer was ABEL, in a letter sent to his friend HOLMBOE when, like
DIRICHLET, he visited Paris in October, t826. ea Poor ABEL: he cannot have
known how right he was, just as he did not understand the Parisian political
situation. While in Berlin during the previous January, he had written a paper
on convergence tests and their application to the binomial series which made
important use of the new analysis: he had also spotted the weakness in CAUCHY'S
theorem of the Cours d ' A n a l y s e and made the first public mention of the point
in a footnote to the paper. 84 Later in the same letter to HOLMBOE he remarked:
" I have worked out a large paper on a certain class of transcendental functions
to present to the Institut. I am doing it on Monday. I showed it to Cauchy: but
he would hardly glance at it. And I can say without bragging t h a t it is good.
I am very curious to hear the judgement of the I n s t i t u t . . . . " ~
This was the paper which ushered in the transformation of LEGENDRE'S theory
of elliptic integrals into his own theory of elliptic functions; and the story of its
fate is only too characteristic of Parisian science and of CAUCtIY. CAUCIIY and
L E G E N D R E w e r e the examiners: CAUCHY took it and, perhaps because of ABEL'S
footnote against his theorem, ignored it entirely: only after ABEL'S death in
t829 did he fulfil a request to return it to the A c a d d m i e des Sciences. I t was
finally published in 184t, when the manuscript vanished in sensational circum-
stances, to be rediscovered only in the t950's. This story is well-known ;~ however,
there is one aspect of it which has been little remarked upon but which shows
the depths to which CAUCH¥ could sink. When ABEL'S paper was in the press
another Norwegian mathematician presented a paper to the A c a d d m i e des Sciences

6s Niels Hendrik Abel. Mdmorial publid h l'occasion du centenaire de sa naissance

(t 902, Christiana), Correspondance d'Abel .... 135 pp. (pp. 45 and 46) = Texte original
des lettres .... 61 pp. (pp. 41 and 42). Also in Oeuvres (ed. L. SYLOW & S. LIE), 2, 259.
6~ lxT.H. A B E L , "Untersuchungen fiber die Reihe ...", Journ. rei. ang. Math., 1
(t826), 311--329 (p. 316) =Oeuvres (ed. B. HOLMBOE), 1, 66--92 (p. 71) =Oeuvres
(ed. L. SYLOW & S. LIE), 1, 219--250 (p. 225).
,5 In addition to the references in ,3, we may add for this passage ABEL'S Oeuvres
(ed. B. HOLMBOE), 2, 269--270.
~ For a detailed account of this affair, see O. ORE, Niels Hendrik Abel - - mathe-
matician extraordinary (t957, Minneapolis), 246--261.
27 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci., Vol. 6
394 I. GI~A:rTAN-GuINNESS:

on elliptic functions. CAUCHYwas again an examiner, and his report contains the
following words:
" G e o m e t e r s know the beautiful works of Abel and of Mr. Jacobi on the
theory of elliptic transcendentals. One knows that of the important papers ...
one of them in particular was approved b y the Acaddmie in t829, on the report
of a commission of which Mr. Legendre was a part ECAucHYhimself having been
the other!l, then crowned by the Institut in 1830, and that the value of the prize
was remitted to Abel's mother. In fact this illustrious Norwegian, whom a pro-
ject of marriage had determined to undertake a voyage in the depth of winter,
unfortunately fell ill towards the middle of J a n u a r y t829 and, in spite of the
care that had been lavished on him by his fianc6e's family, he died of phthisis
on the 6th April, having been confined to bed for three months . . . .
" B e f o r e completing this report where we have often had to recall the works
of Abel, it appears to us proper to dispel an error which is already quite wide-
spread. I t has been supposed that Abel died in misery, and this supposition has
been the occasion for violent attacks directed against scholars from Sweden and
from other parts of Europe. We would want to believe that the authors of these
attacks will regret that they expressed themselves with such vehemence, when
they read the Preface of the ... Oeuvres d'Abel, recently published in Norway
b y Mr. Holmboe, the teacher and friend of the illustrious geometer. They will
see there with interest the flattering encouragements, the expressions of esteem
and admiration that Abel received from scholars during his life, particularly
from those who occupied themselves at the same time as he with the theory of
elliptic transcendentals . . . . -67
In fact CAUCH¥ must have known that, while preparing his t839 edition of
ABEL'S works, HOLMBOEhad tried without success to obtain the 1826 manuscript
from the Acaddmie des Sciences and that its publication in t84t was due only to
the fact that he had raised the matter to governmental level. Anyone capable of
writing in this manner, knowing the negative role played by himself in the matter
under discussion, would hardly think twice about borrowing from an unknown
paper published in Prague without acknowledgement.
But how unknown was BOLZANO'Spaper ?
e~ A.-L. CAI:CH¥, "Rapport sur un m6moire de M. Broch, relatif ~ une certaine

classe d'int6grales," C . R . Acad. Roy. Sci., 12 (184t), 847--850 = Oeuvres, (t) 6,

146---t49. ABEL'S paper was then appearing as "M6moire Bur une propri6t6 g6n6rale
d'une classe tr~s-6tendue de fonctions transcendantes", Mdm. prds. Acad. Roy. Sci.
div. say., (2) 7 (184t), 175--254 =Oeuvres (ed. L. SYLOW & S. LIE), 1, 145--211.
BRocI~'S paper appeared as "M6moire sur les fonctions de la forme
$
+--
f xs-ye-l / (xo) R (xQ) "o Ox",
Journ. rei. ang. Math., 23 (1846), 145--t95 and 20t--242: we note the five-year
delay, and the fact that its publication was not in the journal of the Acaddmie to
which it had been assigned. CAUCHY'Sreport (with LIOUVlLLE as co-signatory but
certainly not author!) prefaced the paper on pp. 145--147: he was referring in the
above quotation to the "Notice Bur la vie de l'auteur" that HOLMBOE put in his
edition of ABEL'S Oeuvres, 1, v--xiv. At the end of that edition HOLMBOEincluded
a selection of his letters from ABEL, and we note from s3 and s5 that he did not include
ABEL'S remark on C A U C H Y .
 ]3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 395

8. The Availability and Familiarity of Bolzano's Work

We have mentioned several times that BOLZANO'S achievements anticipated
specifically the work of the WEIERST~SS school in the t860's, and it was they
who first brought BOLZANO'S mathematical publications 6s to general attention
at that time. Du Bols R~YMOND, CANTO~, HA~KEL, HAR~ACK, H~IZ~E, SC~WA~Z,
STOLZ -- they formed perhaps the most talented group ever to work on founda-
tional problems in analysis, and they all had a deep interest in the history of
their subject. I do not know which of them first came across BOLZANO'Swritings :
the first to make a reference in print was HA~KEL in t871, 69 but SCHWARZwas
the one most interested in these questions and it was he who around that time
named WEIERSTaASS'S theorem on the existence of a limiting value of an infinite
closed sequence of values the "BoLzAZ~o-W~I~RSTRASS theorem", in view of
BOLZA~O'S theorem on the existence of an upper limit in his t817 pamphlet
which we quoted in section 2.4. 7° WEIERSTRASS'S group were then studying
continuous non-differentiable functions, rational and irrational numbers, and
the early ideas of set theory, on all of which BOLZANOhad preceded them; and
so it had tended to be assumed (posterior wisdom again) that in his own day
BOLZANO was not read at all. Without any doubt his works were not widely
available -- for proof of this, we need only mention that it is today extremely
difficult to find copies of any of them. But it would be a mistake to assume that
because they appeared as pamphlets they could not have become widely familiar.
On the contrary, at that time the publication of pamphlets was a common
method of issuing scientific literature and indeed avoided the notorious delays
of academy journals: CAUCHYfor example, always anxious for rapid publication,
put some very important work into pamphlets and lithographs, and even publish-
ed his own mathematical journal during two periods of his life. 7a There seems to
have been a well organised trade in the sale of such material, based on the cata-
lognes of book shops designed especially for scientific and intellectual circles:
it was by these means, for example, that BOLZANOin Bohemia managed to learn
of and obtain the current literature. So we m a y presume that the work was in
reasonably fluid circulation -- and surely especially in Paris, the scientific centre
of the age. CAucHY himself reveals this in his own writings. Although his refer-
6s Apart from the Beweis and the works listed in 35 and 8~, BOLZANOalso published
Betrachtungen iiber einige Gegenstdnde der Elementargeometrie (1804, Prague) =
Schri[ten, 5 (1948, Prague), 9--49; and Beitrdge zu einer begri~ndeten Darstellung der
Mathematik. 1. Lie[erung (t8t0, Prague) = (t926, Paderborn). (No other parts pub-
lished.) BOLZANO'Sfriend F. PRIHONSK~"posthumously published his Paradoxien des
Unendlichen (1851, Leipzig): there have been various re-issues and translations of
this work, including an English edition (1950, London).
65 H. HANKEL, Grenze", Allg. Eric. Wiss. Kiinste, sect. 1, pt. 90 (1871, Leipzig),
"'

t 85--21 t : see pp. t 89, 209---210. The first major study was by STOLZ, as " B. Bolzanos
Bedeutung in der Geschichte der Infinitesimalrechnung", Math. Ann., 18 (1881),
255--279 (and corrections in 22 (1883), 5t8--519).
70 See K. SCHWARZ, " Z u r Integration der partiel Differentialgleichung
~u ~2u
ax , + ~ - = 0 " , Journ. rei. ang. Math., 74 (t872), 218--253 (p. 221) = Abhandlungen,
2, t75--210 (p. 178).
~ See his Exercises des Mathdmatiques (4 vols. and I instalment: 1826---30, Paris),
and Exercises d'Analyse et de Physique Mathdmatique (4 vols: 1840---47, Paris). They
appear respectively in his Oeuvres, (2) 6---9; and (2) 11--14.
27*
 396 I. GRATTAN-GUINN]~SS:

ences were often n o t always given, t h e y show t h a t he was a b r e a s t of c u r r e n t

writings in all E u r o p e a n languages, a n d n o t o n l y t h e m o s t p r o m i n e n t a u t h o r s ,
b o o k s a n d j o u r n a l s : t h e r e are also references to little k n o w n m a t e r i a l . I n t h e
Cours d'Analyse, for example, he referred to a p o m p o u s little t r a c t of t820
p u b l i s h e d in L o n d o n on rules of signs in t h e t h e o r y of equations, 7°' which was at
least as obscure as BOLZANO'S p a m p h l e t . I n fact, ]3OLZANO h a d given his p a p e r
two o p p o r t u n i t i e s for publication, for n o t only d i d he issue it as a p a m p h l e t in
1817, b u t - - w i t h t h e same p r i n t i n g - - i n s e r t e d it into t h e 18t8 v o l u m e of t h e
P r a g u e A c a d e m y Abhandlungen. ~3 T h a t j o u r n a l was a v a i l a b l e in P a r i s : indeed,
t h e Biblioth~que Impdriale (now t h e Biblioth~que Nationale) b e g a n to t a k e i t
w i t h precisely the volume containing Bolzano's pamphlet. 74 So here is a t least one
plausible possibility for CAUCHY to h a v e f o u n d a c o p y of BOLZANO'S paper, quite
a p a r t from t h e b o o k - t r a d e : he could h a v e n o t i c e d a new j o u r n a l in t h e l i b r a r y ' s
stock a n d e x a m i n e d i t as a possible course of i n t e r e s t i n g research.
W e t u r n now from t h e a v a i l a b i l i t y to t h e f a m i l i a r i t y of BOLZANO'S WOrkS.
W e h a v e seen t h a t t h e y were n o t w i d e l y circulated, a l t h o u g h p r o b a b l y m o r e so
t h a n m i g h t be i m a g i n e d ; b u t a p a r t from t h a t I feel t h a t all i m p o r t a n t factor in
t h e a p p a r e n t indifference of his c o n t e m p o r a r i e s was a lack o[ understanding of
w h a t he h a d achieved. Since his i m p o r t a n t results were so far a h e a d of its time,
o n l y a genius of CAUCHY'S t y p e a n d m a g n i t u d e could b r i n g t h e m to t h e reali-
s a t i o n t h e y deserved (and of which t h e i r c r e a t o r was p r o b a b l y incapable). W e
can a p p r e c i a t e this p o i n t b e t t e r if we r e t u r n to ABEL. There is no reference to
a n y of ]3OLZANO'S w o r k s in ABEL'S writings, a n d seemingly no direct influence
either, even t h o u g h t h e y h a d b o t h w r i t t e n on t h e b i n o m i a l series; b u t ABEL h a d
certainly- r e a d some BOLZANO, for he expressed g r e a t a d m i r a t i o n for h i m in a
n o t e b o o k a n d h o p e d to m e e t h i m in P r a g u e during his E u r o p e a n tour. v5 1 suspect
t h a t several m a t h e m a t i c i a n s were in ABEL'S position: i m p r e s s e d b y BOLZANO'S
work, b u t u n a b l e to t a k e it f u r t h e r themselves. 7e B u t w i t h o u t d o u b t t h e r e were,
u n f o r t u n a t e l y , m a n y who n e v e r discovered i t at all. This, therefore, is a s i t u a t i o n
in m a r k e d c o n t r a s t to CAUCI~Y'S works, which were r e a d b y e v e r y b o d y - - in-
cluding BOLZANO.
72 p. NICHOLSON, Essay on involution and evolution: containing a new accurate
and general method o[ ascertaining the numerical value o] any Junction ... (t 820, London).
CAUCH¥'S reference is in the Cours, 500 = Oeuvres, (2) 3, 409: he also wrote a number
of papers on this subject in the 18t0's, b u t with an interest towards structural prop-
erties (permutations, etc.) rather t h a n in the foundations of analysis. F o r commentary,
see H. WusslNG, Die Genesis des abstrakten Gruppenbegri[/es (1969, Berlin) esp.
pp. 61--66.
~3 See the references in a
7~ The present call m a r k of this volume is R. 15 200 in the Ddpartment des Im-
primds. There is no record of its readers, neither does it contain any annotated
markings or corrections. The only other copy of the work known to me in Paris is
in the holding of the journal b y the Musdum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle - - a source
hardly likely to have been used b y CAUCHY. The copy has no revealing annotations on it.
75 See L. SYLOW, " L e s 6tudes d'Abel e t ses d6couvertes," s2, 59 PP. (pP. 6 and t 3);
and K. RYCHLIK, "Niels Hendrik Abel a ~echy", Pok. mat. [ys. astron.;9 (1964),
317--319.
~6 LOBACHEWSKYalso knew BOLZANO'S 18t 7 pamphlet on the roots of a continuous
function: see B. L. LAPTIEV, " 0 ~H6HHoTeqHBIX8an~eax RH~Ir ~I mypHazXOB,~bl~aHm, xx
H. H. JIo6aqeBcKoMy", VClI. MaT. HayIL 14 (t959), pt. 5, t 5 3 - - t 5 5 .
 ]3olzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 397

9. The Personal Relations between Bolzano and Cauchy

That CAOCHYread BOLZANO'S18t7 pamphlet is the subject of our conjecture;
but that BOLZANO read CAOCHY'S Cours d'AnaIyse is beyond question, for in an
important manuscript of the 1830's on analysis he referred to CAUCHY'S as one
of the recent formulations of continuity in his own style. 7~ By then of course,
BOLZANO'S ideas had gained much publicity through CAUCHY'S book, which
itself had been published at KSnigsberg in t 828 in a German translation which
m a y well have been the version that BOLZANOread. Yet there was never a priority
row between the two over their common ideas. This is, however, not surprising.
In the first place, BOLZANOwas no CAUCHY, incessantly anxious for publication
and his "rights"; and in addition he was already a controversial figure in Bo-
hemia on account of his progressive views on society and religion. Thus, even if
he had wanted to stage a priority row from Bohemia against the great CAUCHY
in Paris, he would have found it especially difficult. But I would suggest that
there is still another reason why BOLZANOdid not promote such a row; namely,
that he probably never noticed the correspondence of ideas -- or at least their
significance -- when he read the Cours d'Analyse. For the Cours is a large
book, nearly 600 pages in length; and almost all of it is CAUCHY, applying BOL-
ZANO'S germinal ideas to one analytical problem after another. But the ideas
themselves and the direct points of correspondence appear only here and there
in its course, and could easily be missed in the general context.
This view is strengthened when we consider their personal relations. There
was no meeting between the two in the t810's or 1820% for CAUCHY was in
France and BOLZANO in Bohemia; but after the fall of the Bourbons in 1830
CAUCHY exiled himself, firstly to Italy, and then, between 1833 and t835, to
Prague to assist in the education of the son of the dethroned King CHARLES X.
The tone of BOLZANO'Sreaction to CAUCHY'Svisit to Prague, in a letter he sent
to his friend PRiHONSK~ in August, t833, indicates quite clearly that he had had
no contact with CAUCHY of any sort and that he suspected no direct use of his
results by CAUCHY:
"The news of Cauchy's presence Ein PragueJ is uncommonly interesting for
me. Among all living mathematicians today he is the one whom I esteem the
most and to whom I feel the most akin; I owe to his inventive spirit some of the
most important proofs. I ask you very much to recommend me to him and to
say that I would have travelled now straight to Prague to make his personal
acquaintance, if I -- after what you tell me of his appointment -- could not
hope for certain that I will meet him at the end of September . . . . . ,,Ts
There were in fact a few meetings, for BOLZANOdescribed them in a letter of
December, t843 to FESL:
"Cauchy, the mathematician, was ... in the years t834 or t835 ... in Prague,
where we met a few times during the few days that I was accustomed to spend
at that time (at Easter and in the autumn) in Prague. After m y departure I let

72 ]3. BOLZANO 7, in Schri/ten, 1 (1930, Prague), t5: see also p. 94.

~s See E. WINTER (ed.), "Der b6hmische VormArz in Briefen ]3. Bolzanos an
F. Pr~honsk3~ (t824--t848)", Ver6][. Inst. Slav., Dtsch. Akad. Wiss. Berlin., 11 (1958),
306 pp. (p. 156).
398 I. GRATTAN-GuINNESS:

Kulik deliver to him (1834) an essay filling a single quarto sheet which I had
drafted for Cauchy sometime in French, on the famous mathematical problem
of the rectification of curves, because I rightly feared that he would find the
" P a p e r on the three problems of rectification, planing and cubing" published
in 18t779 too comprehensive and difficult. Early last year, as I was looking
through some issues of Cauchy's writings 8° bound with the usual coloured wrap-
pers, and [turned to I the lists of works announced on the back, I noticed with
astonishment a small note by him on the same subject, that he had published
as a lithograph in Paris in t834 (therefore presumably only after he had read m y
little essay). Naturally I would be very eager to read the note . . . . ,,81
Eventually BOLZANOmanaged to obtain a copy of the paper: in fact it came
through FESL who pointed out to him that it had been written in 1832 rather
than 1834 and so could not be related to his essay, and that it treated the sub-
ject in a quite different way. BOLZANO admitted this in an acknowledgement to
FESL in May, t 844, 82 and it is quite clear that in this case there was not even a
correspondence of ideas; but on the foundations of analysis a very different
situation seems to have applied. One would dearly like to know the content of
their conversations; but if BOLZANO ever wondered even for a moment that
CAUCHY had read his 18t7 paper before writing the tours d'Analyse, I imagine
that he would have been pleased rather than annoyed. For when he wrote that
paper, he had known then that it was a significant work which would probably
not reach the audience that it deserved; and so he had ended its preface with a
plea to the scientific community which I believe CAUCHYaccepted:

"... I must request ... that one does not overlook this particular paper be-
cause of its limited size, but rather examine it with all possible strictness and
make known publicly the results of this examination, in order to explain more
clearly what is perhaps unclear, to revoke what is quite incorrect, but to let
succeed to general acceptance, the sooner the better, what is true and right. ''s8

10. Epilogue
My conjecture has aroused considerable adverse criticism before publication,
and will doubtless receive much more now: thus to minimise the possibility of
misunderstandings of this paper, a few points m a y be worth stressing.
t. Part of m y purpose has been to describe some of the extra-intellectual
aspects of Parisian mathematics; and whether or not m y conjecture is correct

~9 Tile reference for this work is given in 29

80 Presumably the Exercises d'Analyse listed in 71
sl See I. SEIDERLOVA, "]3emerkung zu den UmgAngen zwischen B. Bolzano und
A. Cauchy," ~as. pdst. mat., 87 (t962), 225--226.
82 See sl. CAUCHY'Spaper, read to the Acaddmie des Sciences on the 22nd October,
1832, was the "M6moire sur la rectification des courbes et la quadrature des surfaces
courbes", Mdm. Acad. Roy. Sci., 22 (1850), 3--15 = Oeuvres, (1) 2, 167--t77; but in
the publisher's lists in the Exercises d'Analyse it is described as an t l-page lithograph
of t 832, which was its first publication. I do not understand why ]3OLZANOthought
that it had been published in t 834.
s8 ]3. ]3OLZANO,Beweis, end of preface.
 Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis 399

I am firmly convinced that rivalries of the type of which I have given some
examples played an important role in Parisian mathematics, and so I have tried
to bring to the attention of historians of this period the kinds of historical problem
that they will have to face in interpreting its literature. In addition, the theory
of "limit-avoidance" is an historical tool which appears to be some use in one
form or another in investigating the development of analysis and the calculus
in this and other periods.
2. I cannot stress too strongly that in characterising Cauchy's genius as respon-
sive to exterior stimuli I am trying to describe rather than decry the depth and
extent of his originality. Without any question he and GAUSS were the major
mathematicians of the first decades of the nineteenth century: thus his work
has to be given especial attention by historians. It is of course not m y position
that CAUCHY would never give references without intending a double meaning,
but I do think that in his writings, and equally in those o[ his" colleagues", questions
of this type do need to be borne very carefully in mind. With regard to ]3OLZANO'S
pamphlet, it is possible that CAUCHY,the busy and active researchmathematician
and professor at three Paris colleges, simply did not bother to mention it or
even forgot that he had read it (though personally I would not regard this
explanation as sufficient). My case would be much strengthened by documentary
evidence of some kind: CAUCHY did leave a Nachlass containing mathematical
manuscripts and correspondence, for it was used by VALSON when preparing
his excessively admiring biography of CAUCHY,s4 but unfortunately it was kept
in the family and there is reason to think that, like his library, it has now been lost.
3. I remarked that CAUCHY was familiar with European languages: in the
case of German, it is perhaps worth mentioning explicitly (from a number of
examples) that he examined in t817 a manuscript in German sent in to the
Acaddmie des Sciences, s5 and that he reviewed MCBIUS'S Der barycentrische Calcul
in t828. s~ We may also record another "coincidence of ideas" with obscure
German writing strikingly similar to the case of t3OLZANO'S pamphlet. In April
t847, GRASSMANN,then a schoolmaster at Stettin, sent to CAUCHY tWO copies
of his t844 Ausdehnungslehre, but he never received any acknowledgement; how-
ever between late 1847 and t853 CAUCHY published a number of papers on a
theory of "clefs algCbriques" which basically used the same sort of ideas and
even some almost identical notation, s7 I offer no judgement here on the matter:
84 C.-A. VALSON, La vie et les travaux du Baron Cauchy (2 vols.: 1868, Paris):
see esp. vol. 2, viii--x.
s5 See Proc~s-Verbaux des sdances de l'Acaddmie tenues depuis la fondation jusqu'au
mois d'ao~t, 1835 (10 vols: 1910--22, Hendaye), 6, 210. I may remark here that these
volumes are an invaluable source of historical insight into the period 1795--1835,
when the rivalries were at their height. They give the minutes of all the private
meetings of the A caddmie des Sciences, which the participants can hardly have expected
to be published!
s6 A.-L. CAUCHY,Bull. Univ. Sci. Ind. [Ferrusac~, Sci. math. phys. chim., 9 (1828),
77--80. Not in the Oeuvres.
sT For the references and some discussion of the affair, see M. J. CROWE, A history
of vector analysis (1967, Notre Dame and London), 82--85 and 106. CROWE'S last
reference in his 63 is inaccurate and ill fact misleading; it should be "MCmoire sur les
clefs algCbriques", Exercises d'Analyse et de Physique Mathdmatique, 4 (t847, Paris),
356---400 = Oeuvres, (2) 14, 4t7--460.
400 I. GRATTAN-GUINNESS: Bolzano, Cauchy and New Analysis

I merely record it as another example of the kind of historical problem which

surrounds the great achievements of the Parisian mathematicians of the time,
when Paris was the centre of the scientific world and CAUCHY'$ achievements
among its principal adornments.

Index of Names
We list here the names and dates of persons mentioned in the main text.
D'ALEMBERT, JEAN LE ROND (t 7t 7--1783)
AMPERE, ADRIEN MARIE (1775--1836)
ARBOGAST, LOUIS FRANCOIS ANTOINE (1759--1803)
BERNOULLI, DANIEL (1700--t 782)
BESSEL, FRIEDRICHWILHELM (1784--1846)
BLOT, JEAN BAPTISTE (t 774--1862)
DU BOIS REYMOND, PAUL DAVID GUSTAV (t83t--1889)
BOLZANO, BERNARD PLACIDUS JOHANN NEPOMUK (t781--1848)
BOREL, EMILE FELIX EDOUARD JUSTIN (187t--t959)
CANTOR, GEORG FERDINAND LUDWIG PHILIPP (1845--t 918)
CARNOT, LAZARENICOLAS MARGUERITE(1753--t823)
CAUCHY, AUGUSTIN-LouIs (t 789--1857)
CHARLES X, KING (t 757--1836)
DIRICHLET, PETER GUSTAVLEJEUNE- (1805--t859)
EULER, LEONHARD (I707--t 783)
FESL, MICHAEL JOSEPH (1786--1864)
FOURIER, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH (I 768--t830)
GAUSS, KARL FRIEDRICH (1777--t855)
GRASSMANN, HERMANN G/JNTHER (1809---t877)
HANKEL, HERMANN (t839--1873)
HARNACK, CARL GUSTAVAXEL (I 851--1888)
HEINE, EDUARD HEINRICH (I821--I 881)
L'HUILIER, SIMON ANTOINE JEAN (1750--1840)
HOLMBOE, BERNT MICHAEL (1795--1850)
JACOBI, CARL GUSTAV JACOB (t804--1851)
KULIK, JAKOB PHILIPP (1793--1863)
LACROIX, SYLVESTREFRAN9OIS (1765--1843)
LAGRANGE, JOSEPH LOUIS (1736--18t 3)
LAPLACE, PII~RRE SIMON (1749---1827)
LEGENDRE, ADRIEN MARIE (1752--t833)
LEIBNIZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM (1646--1716)
M6BIUS, AUGUSTFERDINAND (t 790--1868)
MONGE, GASPARD (! 746--1818)
NEWTON, ISAAC (1642--1727)
POISSON, SIMI~ONDENIS (1781--1840)
PR~HONSK~', FRANZ (1788--t859)
RIEMANN, GEORG FRIEDRICH BERNHARD (1826--1866)
SCHWARZ, KARL HERMANN AMANDUS (1843--192t)
STOLZ, OTTO (1842--1905)
TAYLOR, BROOKE (1685--1731)
VALSON, CLAUDEALPHONSE (1826-- ? )
WEIERSTRASS, KARL THEODORWILHELM (t 8t 5--1897)

Enfield College of Technology

Middlesex
England

(Received February 17, 1970.)