Historical Math and Science Blog

Many math and science papers make use of the subjunctive mood (expressing doubt, uncertainty, etc) just by the nature of science and mathematics in general. This goes for any language. Conjunctions and short phrases make up much of the vocabulary needed for translation, as well as cognates; words more common in language (compare integral  with root , the latter being much more common in everyday usage in a variety of meanings) will require translation. It is sometimes the case that the meaning of a word or phrase is a false cognate, and other times the translation of a word from one language to another is imperfect. The best source of information on word meanings in a given context is a native language dictionary. The definitions can often be translated easily into English for a more reliable translation and meaning.  References for translating French: Dictionnaire Larousse - French language dictionary, very useful web interface, a great reference for all words Google Transla...

 Today, by chance, I decided to check out Joseph-Louis Lagrange's works, Oeuvres Lagrange , in particular tome 3. It's a remarkable coincidence, because I have only downloaded one book (tome) of Oeuvres Lagrange, book 3, and for no reason in particular I decided to browse it, finding that the first article relates to the solution of general algebraic and transcendental equations! This is a coincidence because the papers from Euler and Lambert that I've been working on (see Welcome article for now) relate to this very topic, and Lagrange is essentially picking up where Lambert left off, using series to represent the roots of polynomials.       Lagrange's paper, Nouvelle méthode pour résoudre les équations littérales par le moyen des séries  (Mémoires de l'Académie royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Berlin, t. XXIV, 1770) does a far superior job to Lambert's series solution of the same problem, because Lambert's series could only determine any power of ...