Abstract
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, February,—Prof. F. N. Cole is the chronicler of the proceedings at the eighth annual meeting, in New York City, of the Society on December 27, 28, 1901. Though now two days are devoted to, the conference, owing to the large number of papers sent in (twenty-seven), this time is hardly adequate, and it is becoming a serious question whether it will not be necessary to adopt a practice of selection, permitting the presentation, even then in condensed form, of more important papers only. The meeting was largely attended, the number of members present amounting to fifty-nine. A social feature was the dinner on the Friday evening. The officers and members of council were elected. Sir Robert Ball was present, and amongst the abstracts of the papers communicated is that of his recent researches in the theory of screws. Miss Scott's paper on a recent method for treating the intersections of plane curves investigates the nature of the set of equations discussed in Dr. F. S. Macaulay's paper in the London Mathematical Society's Proceedings, vol. xxxi., giving different and simpler proofs of the theorems obtained by Dr. Macaulay.—Prof. Holgate gives an account of the proceedings at the January meeting of the Chicago section, held at Evanston, Illinois, January. 2, 3, 1902. Here also the attendance was unusually large. Nineteen papers were presented, and abstracts of thena are here given. “The Vector Analysis” of Dr. E. B. Wilson is reviewed by Prof. A. Ziwet. Prof. Gibbs's “Elements of Vector Analysis”(1881–4) attracted wide attention, though it was only a pamphlet (83 pp.) printed for the use of his students. This Mr. O. Heaviside adopted, with slight modifications, and expounded fully in his “Electromagnetic Theory” (1893). Dr. Wilson's work is founded upon Prof. Gibbs's course of lectures delivered in 1899–1900, and gives the first generally accessible authentic record of Prof. Gibbs's, system. The additions to the theory of the (1881–4) pamphlet are not extensive, though Dr. Wilson's.book runs into 436 pp. This bulkiness is due to the lavishly open print and partly to the author's effort to make the subject easily intelligible by supplying numerous illustrations and applications. A good index is a desideratum, and the printing details lack the advantage of external aids now so common in carefully printed mathematical text-books.—Mr. J. L. Coolidge gives an interesting notice of Dr. Max Simon's “Euclid und die sechs planimetrischen Bücher” and of Prof. M. J. M. Hill's “The Contents of the Fifth and Sixth Books of Euclid.”—The notes and new publications givi the usual interesting information.
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Scientific Serials . Nature 65, 546–547 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/065546a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/065546a0