Lucien Poincare

M. Lucien Poincare is one of the distinguished family of mathematicians which has during the last few years given a Minister of Finance to the Republic and a President to the Academie des Sciences. He is also one of the nineteen Inspectors-General of Public Instruction who are charged with the duty of visiting the different universities and lycees in France and of reporting upon the state of the studies there pursued. Hence he is in an excellent position to appreciate at its proper value the...See more

M. Lucien Poincare is one of the distinguished family of mathematicians which has during the last few years given a Minister of Finance to the Republic and a President to the Academie des Sciences. He is also one of the nineteen Inspectors-General of Public Instruction who are charged with the duty of visiting the different universities and lycees in France and of reporting upon the state of the studies there pursued. Hence he is in an excellent position to appreciate at its proper value the extraordinary change which has lately revolutionized physical science, while his official position has kept him aloof from the controversies aroused by the discovery of radium and by recent speculations on the constitution of matter. M. Poincare's object and method in writing the book are sufficiently explained in the preface which follows; but it may be remarked that the best of methods has its defects, and the excessive condensation which has alone made it possible to include the last decade's discoveries in physical science within a compass of some 300 pages has, perhaps, made the facts here noted assimilable with difficulty by the untrained reader. To remedy this as far as possible, I have prefixed to the present translation a table of contents so extended as to form a fairly complete digest of the book, while full indexes of authors and subjects have also been added. The few notes necessary either for better elucidation of the terms employed, or for giving account of discoveries made while these pages were passing through the press, may be distinguished from the author's own by the signature "ED." See less