Traité de Mathématiques générales a l'usage des Chimistes, Physiciens, Ingénieurs, et des Elèves des Facultés des Science

Abstract

IN 440 octavo pages of generously spaced printing, the author gives treatises on algebra, analytical geometry, the calculus, including differential equations, and even partial differential equations and mechanics. The book is very interesting, as it is intended for persons presumably not very mathematical, and there is hardly one page of it which can be understood by a person who has not already made a study of higher mathematics. Every now and again it seems to strike the author that he is philosophising over the head of his reader, and for a moment he drops low enough to be understood by a chemist who has given more than the usual time to mathematics, but it is only for a moment, Naturally, he does not mention dy/dx until he has quite finished his treatment of curves by analytical geometry, and the time of vibration of his simple pendulum is given as an infinite series. He does not show anywhere that he knows the problems to which the chemist, physicist, or engineer would apply his mathematics. He does not seem to know that there are mathematical principles underlying thermodynamics and the flow of heat and problems In electricity which he might have referred to. The harm done by such a presentation of the subject is incalculable; it gives a student the notion that he cannot possibly learn to use mathematics, whereas we know that almost any person can be taught to use the highest kind of mathematical weapon with confidence and security.

Traité de Mathématiques générales a l'usage des Chimistes, Physiciens, Ingénieurs, et des Elèves des Facultés des Science.

By Prof. E. Fabry. Pp. x + 440. (Paris: A. Hermann et Fils, 1909.) Price 9 francs.