PBA Galleries

One page, in ink, written in English. 24x19.5 cm. (9½x7¾").

The noted French mathematician writes to “My lord”, probably Edward Stanley, Lord Derby. Hermite writes, in slightly uncomfortable English, “It is with a profound feeling of gratitude that I received your kind invitation to the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. No testimony could be more precious for me than that of the honorable Members of a Society renowned in the whole Europe for the services it has rendered to Science. I would have been very happy to find at the Meeting several friends, since a long time already my fellow labourers, but imperious duties compel me to renounce to this satisfaction, the epoch of the Meeting being this where I am obliged to do the Examines of admission for the Polytechnic School…” Called by one historian “the father of modern mathematical analysis”, Hermite (1822-1901) was the most renowned French Mathematician of his day, famous for his theorems and research in Physics as well as Mathematics. His accomplishments (“application of elliptic functions to provide the first solution to the quintic equation” and “the first proof that e is a transcendental number, not the root of any algebraic equation with rational coefficients”) are perhaps most intelligible to his mathematical descendants, who commonly refer to “Hermitian forms”, but as more general proof of his eminence,  both a crater on the moon and two streets in Paris were named in his honor. This letter, written a year after publication of some of his major discoveries, is rare. Only one Hermite letter has sold (at auction in Germany) during the past 35 years.