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Mathematical Treasure: Analytic Geometry of Briot & Bouquet

Author(s): 
Frank J. Swetz (The Pennsylvania State University)

Charles Briot (1817-1882) and Claude Bouquet (1819-1885) are two French mathematicians who are particularly remembered for their contributions to analysis. In collaboration, they produced many works of mathematics, one of which was Leçons de Géometrie Analytic (1875). This book became very popular and went through several Europeans editions before a 14th edition was published in English as Elements of Analytic Geometry in 1896.

 

Here is an image of the letter of permission for the English language translation.

Examples on pages 488 and 489 demonstrate the conversion of given curves into polar coordinate form.

Pages 504 and 505 begin “Chapter V, Concerning Similitude” [similar figures]. The authors employed the concept of a homothety, a transformation β in the plane that fixes one point of the domain O, and for any other point P, maps it in a collinear fashion such that β(OP) = kOP, where k is a real number.

 

This material is obtained through the courtesy of the University of California Libraries. A complete digital copy can be read on the UC Libraries’ Internet Archive.

 

Frank J. Swetz (The Pennsylvania State University), "Mathematical Treasure: Analytic Geometry of Briot & Bouquet," Convergence (August 2016)