Notice on the subject of
Recherches sur la précession des équinoxes1

Leonhard Euler2

Whereas this memoir was inserted in the volume of the Mémoires de l'Académie for the year 1749, the author declares that he had not written it until after he had read the excellent work of Mr. d'Alembert on this material, and that he makes no pretense to the glory that is due to he who first resolved this important question. As his goal was only to set out the course that he had followed in working through this problem, he did not include a preliminary discourse, in which he would not have failed to indicate that it is solely to Mr. d'Alembert that we are indebted for the discussion of this important material. As Mr. d'Alembert's work has been greeted with such universal praise, it therefore seemed superfluous to inform the public of a deed so well established and known to all. But since these circumstances may fall into obscurity with time, we feel it necessary to inform the public with the following notice: that it is also Mr. d'Alembert who was the first to give an account of the nature of those curves that have a cuspidal point of the second kind, or bird's beak.

Footnotes:

1E180 - Opera Omnia, Ser. II, vol. 31, p. 124, originally in Mémoires de l'académie des sciences de Berlin 5 (1750), 1752, p. 412.
2Translated by Robert E. Bradley, © 2003


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