RePoSS #11: The Mathematics of Niels Henrik Abel: Continuation ...

19.4. The fate of the Paris memoir 375
19.4 The fate of the Paris memoir
ABEL’S Paris memoir had a strange and adventurous fate which had certain influences
on ABEL’S career. 46 After ABEL had delivered his memoir to the Académie des Sciences,
the Academy commissioned A.-M. LEGENDRE (1752–1833) and CAUCHY to present a
report on it. The manuscript soon landed on CAUCHY’S desk, where it withered until
1829. After having learned of ABEL’S untimely death from a communication on 22
June 1829 by LEGENDRE, 47 CAUCHY finally took the time to write the report which
was dated 29 June 1829. 48 CAUCHY explicitly noticed in his report how ABEL treated
implicitly defined algebraic functions and that this was a necessary requirement for
his theorems to be true. 49 This is further indication that the introduction of implicitly
given algebraic functions was not completely obvious and standard.
Manuscript lost and found. Based on CAUCHY’S positive report, the Académie des
Sciences decided to include the ABEL’S Paris memoir in the Mémoires présentés par divers
savants once a new copy had been prepared. Furthermore, ABEL was — posthumously
and jointly with C. G. J. JACOBI (1804–1851) — awarded the Grand prix of the Académie
des Sciences in 1830. However, the manuscript was misplaced — possibly as a result
of the turbulent events in Paris in 1830 — as a Norwegian enquiry would realize in
1832 when B. M. HOLMBOE (1795–1850) was beginning to prepare the first edition of
ABEL’S Œuvres. Consequently, the Œuvres appeared in 1839 without the Paris memoir.
Apparently, this provoked some reaction from the [Académie des Sciences]Académie
which commissioned LIBRI with the job of seeing it through print and, as noted, it was
published in 1841.
While preparing the second edition of ABEL’S collected works, M. S. LIE (1842–
1899) in 1874 obtained permission to consult the original manuscript supposedly held
in the archives of the Académie des Sciences. 50 However, the manuscript was again
nowhere to be found in the archives and again had to be considered lost. Conse-
quently, the Paris memoir was included in the second edition of ABEL’S collected works
but with the version printed by the French Academy in 1841 as the source. In the twen-
tieth century, a copy of the manuscript was first located in Rome by P. HEEGAARD
(1871–1948) in 1942 before V. BRUN (1885–1978) 51 succeeded in finding the majority
of ABEL’S original manuscript in Florence ten years later. Recently, in 2000, the fi-
nal eight missing pages have been found and the whereabouts of the entire original
manuscript of ABEL’S Paris memoir are known for the first time in 150 years.
46 The fate of the Paris memoir is described in most biographies of ABEL. Additionally, information
for the present sketch is drawn from papers including (Brun, 1949; Brun, 1953; Lange-Nielsen, 1927;
Lange-Nielsen, 1929).
47 (Lange-Nielsen, 1929, 14).
48 (Lange-Nielsen, 1927, 67).
49 CAUCHY’S report is reproduced in (ibid., 69).
50 (N. H. Abel, 1881, II, 294)
51 Information from (Scriba, 1980).