Euler on Your Own
How to use the available sources
without learning Latin first
Friday, August 11, 2006
Original sources
Journals from St. Petersburg and Berlin
Archives in Berlin, St. Petersburg and
Moscow
1 or 2 new letters discovered each year
Latin, French, German and Russian
Rare and expensive
Opera Omnia
coming out since 1915
80 volumes in 4 series
Opera Omnia
Series I – Mathematics – 29 volumes
Series II – Mechanics and Astronomy – 31
volumes
Series III – Optics, sound, miscellaneous –
12 volumes
Series IV – Letters and notebooks –
projected to be 12 volumes of letters, 4 out
Opera Omnia
Birkhauser, 160 Euros/volume
72 volumes in Series I-III for 14000 Euros
Mostly in Latin (80%) with introductions
in German
In many libraries
East Germany – 1960’s
Euler-Goldbach letters
3 volumes of other correspondence
Registres of the Berlin Academy
two Festschriften (1957, 1983)
In English
Euler: The Master of Us All
– available from the MAA
AMS – Varajaradan
MAA – four books in 2007
Elsevier – Bradley/Sandifer
In Translation
 John Blanton’s Introductio (2 vol) and Calculus
Differentialis (first part only)
 Algebra
 Letters to a German Princess
 Konigsburg Bridge Problem
 Continued Fractions
 Artillery (very rare)
 Maneuvering of Ships (very, very rare)
On Line
The Euler Archive
www.EulerArchive.org
www.EulerArchive.org
Dominic Klyve and Lee Stemkoski at
Dartmouth
Scanned images of over 800 original
papers from the Commentarii
Electronic Eneström and Fuss indices
The Euler Archive
Tables of Contents for the Commentarii
Links to translations
More useful stuff is to come.
“With the Euler Archive, we hope to move
18th century scholarship into the 21st
Century.”
Berlin-Brandenburgische
Akademie der Wissenschaften
www.bbaw.de,
www.bbaw.de/pub/historisch.html
early serial publications
Miscellanea Berolinensia
Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences
et Belles Lettres.(over 100 Euler papers
Rechenkunst
in German
Christian Siebeneicher’s site
www.mathematik.uni-
bielefeld.de/~sieben/euler/rechenkunst.htm
l
Gallica
 http://gallica.bnf.fr
 Bibliothèque National du France
 Over 70,000 digital documents
 ten random volumes of the Opera Omnia,
 I.2, I.7, I.8, I.17, I.18, I.20, I.21, II.1, II.2, III.1
 two of Euler’s papers
 French and Latin editions of the Introductio
The Euler Society
www.EulerSociety.org
annual conferences
Part of MathFest 2007
– San Jose, CA, August 3-5
Eulerama
2007 celebrations begin at JMM in New
Orleans
Short course
MAA tour of St. Pete, Berlin, Basel
BBAW events in Berlin
Euler Society 2007
Learning Latin
"Latin is easy."
Hurdles to Latin
"Help" doesn't always help much
textbooks are about Romans
Latin teachers tell you "puncta" means
"prompt"
"Mathematical Latin is easy"
written for a second-language audience
limited vocabulary and grammar
Hints
 Use your context
 Pretend it's English
 works well for nouns and adjectives
 Pretend it's French (or Spanish)
 works well for verbs and pronouns
 Study some Latin
 Wheelock
 Google - Latin language lessons
 pronouns
Dive right in
You only have to read.
No writing, speaking or listening
Impress your friends!