Translators Notes.

This translation is part of a larger project, an online library of the works of Leonhard Euler, which has been named The Euler Archi e. !t was thought that the Enestr"m !nde# would be a useful addition to the website and to the world of Eulerian scholarship. $ince ! had an interest in the project, a basic knowledge of %erman, and two ery good %erman dictionaries, ! was gi en the task of translating the Enestr"m !nde#. !f you are using this inde# ! will assume you know all about Leonhard Euler, the $wiss mathematician who li ed from &'(')&'*+, and wrote all sorts of pieces about all sorts of mathematical and scientific subjects. ,hat you would not ha e known, if it werent for %usta Enestr"m, the $wedish math historian, was e#actly how much Euler had written. Enestr"m was the first person to list out e ery piece of work Euler e er wrote. -e fortunately also numbered his list, and these numbers ha e become a common shorthand for referring to Eulers works. The inde# was originally published in the &.&+ edition of the Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung. !t originally contained + sections, as well as a supplement /Nachtrge0 to the first section, an appendi# /Anhang0, and an inde#. The first section and its supplement, which ! ha e translated, are a list of all the pieces Euler wrote ordered by their dates of publication. Each piece is gi en a separate entry, and an inde# number. !n the notes for each entry, Enestr"m includes further publication information, and sometimes a brief summary of the pieces subject. The supplement contains additional notes on certain pieces, and a few pieces that Enestr"m didnt know about when he first made his inde#. The supplement also contained some corrections of things misprinted in the first section. !n this ersion ! ha e made those corrections. The second section is ordered by the dates on which the pieces were presumably written, and the third section is organi1ed by subject. These sections only list the titles of the pieces, and they use the numbering system from the first section /$ee how useful it was, already20. ! did not think that these sections added any real information, so ! did not translate them. The appendi# is a list of the works of 3ohann Albrecht Euler, Leonhard Eulers son, which ! did not translate since the Euler Archi e is only concerned with the work of Leonhard Euler. ! didnt gi e my translation an inde#, because, frankly, ! ran out of time. Enestr"m also made a second inde# of Eulers manuscripts and handwritten papers, published in a different olume of the &.&+ Jahresbericht, but since ! really dont know how many of these still e#ist and where they can be found, ! didnt translate this either. !t is 4uite ama1ing that after doing such an e#hausti e search for Eulers work, and such a carefully organi1ed inde#, that he didnt write an introduction e#plaining his system. -e did write an e#tremely thorough introduction to his second inde#, but it shed little light on his first inde#. ! had one copy of his first inde# which said that the second edition would contain an introduction as well as additional supplements, but ! couldnt find this second edition. $o ! ha e done the best ! could to make sense of Enestr"ms cryptic notation. !n any case where ! didnt know what Enestr"m was talking about ! left it e#actly as he printed it /for instance, the note 56o. 3.78 in E9:*0. There were a few words that ! had a bit of trouble translating. Enestr"m spoke 4uite a few more languages than ! do and he would sometimes slip in a Latin phrase, and theres nothing ! can do about it. There are also a few %erman words that could ha e se eral meanings, and it wasnt always clear which Enestr"m meant. The word 5;eihe,8 which literally means 5row,8 can mean either a se4uence or a series. And the word 5Tafel,8 can mean a table, or a picture of some sort, or a printing plate, or an entire page of pictures which was printed with a single printing

plate. ! ha e translated this word as 5diagram8 in most places. This is not perfect, but at least distinguishes 5Tafel8 from 5<igure,8 which usually means Euler actually labeled the picture 5<igure &,8 in his piece. Also ! was ne er 4uite sure what part of a book the 5=ogensignatur8 was, and ha e translated that as 5inscription.8 <or the most part ! ha e left things as Enestr"m wrote them. ! did try to preser e the original titles with their original spelling errors intact, and no e#tra ones added by my careless typing. !n many cases ! ha e fully written out things that he abbre iated, and ! ha e changed the format of the entries in an attempt to make the inde# more readable. ! ha e sometimes changed the order around to make it more standard from entry to entry. ! ha e also Americani1ed the city names when they were not part of the original titles /for instance, =russels instead of =ru#elles or =r>ssel0. <urther information about how to read the inde#, and a guide to abbre iations, can be found in my own introduction. ,hen ! first started this project ! heard rumors that Enestr"m had put ama1ing secret disco eries somewhere in his inde#, and ! was disappointed to disco er that, after all, it was just an inde#. As ! went through and translated, howe er, ! noticed a few things that ! thought were unusual or interesting. There are certain patterns to the entries, and when they were broken, it seemed worth noting. ?ou must bear in mind that ! ha e ery little background in Eulerian scholarship, and so my obser ations may be important, or they may be merely the result of the agaries of those wacky academic journals. <or what theyre worth, here are my obser ations@ ) Aomment. acad. sc. Betrop. /ed. no a0 ol. : was published in &'C+, ol. D was published in &'CC. /see E99+, 9C0. ) E&C was presented in &'+9, and published in &'+D in the olume that was supposedly for the year &'9.. ) E:* includes 5obser ations sent in by a cle er woman.8 ) The Latin ersion of E*+ seems to ha e disappeared. ) E&(&A@ 5According to the foreword, the second part should be translated by Eramp, and there is a second title page, but this second part appears ne er to ha e been printedF in any case ! ha e not seen any e#amples of it.8 ) $ome of Eulers works are actually presented twice to the same academy, including E&9:, +&+2, +&D, +&:2, +9+, +C(, +D&, +D., C+(2 /with a gap of ' years between the two presentations0, C'+ ) E&+'@ This Summarium dissertationum has a olume number and a year, but none of the others do. ) !n E&:* Euler is totally lying to dAlembert who is his ri al. ) The pieces were often presented to $t. Betersburg in clumps. E&++)&+. and &:' are all presented on $eptember 9, &'C*. And E9'+, 9*+)*, 9.D)', +(& were all presented on Gecember &, &':(. ) The =erlin Academy always sees Eulers work before the $t. Betersburg Academy does. !s it possible that Euler read them in =erlin as he wrote them and then mailed them to ;ussia in batches2 ) E&C.A is published by the widow of %ottfried -einrich $chwan. ) A. %. 3. 3acobi has a lot of different titles and dates than the one gi en by the other records. ! think Enestr"m cites him e ery single time so that 3acobis statements can be taken with a grain of salt. ) E99. has . figures 5of which, admittedly, figure ' appears to be missing.8

) )

) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

) ) ) ) )

) ) ) )

E9*C has an &* year gap between =erlin and ;ussia. !t was read to the =erlin Academy on $eptember :, &'C9 and it was presented to the $t. Betersburg Academy on Gecember &, &':(. E+(. is published in ol. &D /the &'D. olume0, +&( in ol. 9( /the &':C olume0. !t looks like the Memoires skipped D years so they could print current olumes but also tried to keep up with the old ones. !n other words, they are not printed at all in chronological order, and my first obser ation about the Commentarii is no longer as shocking. Hersions of E+** ary by up to +(( pages, all si1e *(. $ome of the translations must ha e been looser than others. No i comment. acad. sc. Betrop. ol. &D is published on timeI /see EC(D, for e#.0 E++9 was presented in =erlin on Jay :, &'D&, and is not published until &':' /in the supposedly &':( olume0. E+:D@ dAlembert actually publishes something of Eulers. ,hy2 Enestr"m thinks EC&: was written by Euler, though the title says 5Aarolo Euler, Leonhardi filio.8 -e does not gi e any e idence to the contrary. The Novi commentarii stops all of a sudden in &''', right when it was finally being published on time. And then its replaced by the Nova acta in &''*, which stops dead in &''.. These journals are so weird. EC9D is supposedly for the year of &''& and printed in &''9, but it was actually presented Jay &''9. Euler is such a cheater. Euler took ECCD back a year after he presented it, and then a year after that he presented it again. ,as he making corrections2 EC'9 is also in a olume thats dated too early, but only by two weeks. -owe er, since so many of the pieces are printed so late because the journals fall hopelessly behind, it does seem suspicious when something is printed ahead, especially since it is known that Euler deliberately cheated on at least one occasion. !n &'': a whole bunch of stuff from &''& is suddenly being printed EC'* and C'. were presented only : days apart. EC.' and C.* were only C days apart. L and 3. A. Euler collaborated on EC*D. ED(& is printed . years late ED(9 is supposedly for the year &''', printed in &'*(, but it was actually presented in &''*. This cheating is becoming rampant. ! wonder why Euler didnt co er his tracks better. ! mean, if he was in charge of the journal, he must ha e been in charge of the mysterious records that our dear %. E. keeps citing. &'.&K&'.9 the Nova acta acad. which was doing so well on catching up the dates now ine#plicably skips two years and gets behind again. Gitto &'..K&*(&. Theres a footnote to &'.9 which talks about a literary fraud where someone tried to pass their own work off as Eulers, which must ha e fooled a lot of people, since it was reprinted as part of E'*:. The fourth olume of 5!nstitutiones calculi integralis8 has no second edition, just first and third. ! think it is pretty ridiculous that Eulers stuff is published in journals which are supposedly disco eries for the year of &*9C when he has ob iously been long dead. ! heard they just kept a big stack of his papers in their office, and when they needed e#tra filler they would just take a bunch of his treatises from the stack.

) ) ) )

E*&+@ !m not saying this is really all that cool, but ! do think it is an odd tradition that all numbers for probability problems ha e to be drawn out of an urn. ,as it started by ancient %reeks or someone who actually had urns2 E'**@ Euler wrote to %oldbach twice in two days /on August &D and &', &'D(0. ,hat did he ha e to say that was so urgent2 ED9( is cheating the dates earlier again. $o is ED9+, D9C and D9', and more. !t continues after his death though /ED+'0. Also theres a lot of good stuff in the supplement.

There are also a few things Enestr"m did that seem incorrect or inconsistent@ ) -e only checked the spelling in the titles of languages he knew. Jy ;ussian proofreader, Jikhail Akulo , would like to note the following spelling mistakes@ 5LMNOPQ8 in E+*'A+, 5LROLSRTUL8 and 5VMPLSRNWPXY8 in EC9:A, and 5Z[WP8 in '++A. ) $ometimes the ;ussian translation of the abstract gets its own number, like E&::a. =ut in E&**)&.:, it doesnt. Then in like E99*a, it does again. ) EC&*A is listed as an A, but its not a translation. !t should be C&*9. ) !n E'*( Enestr"ms got to ha e written the wrong the page number. ) ! belie e E'&* discusses prime numbers, not composite numbers. Acknowledgements. ! would ery much like to thank the following people@ Gominic Ely e for finding old books for me, translating my English into better English, and continually telling me that people would actually want to look things up in my inde#. %reg Leibon for getting me course credit for this project. Jeredith Eolar and \lrike ;ainer for help with the %erman. Jikhail Akulo for help with the ;ussian and the pre)re olutionary alphabet. Ed $andifer for answering the hard 4uestions. Eichul Eim for helping me type, most especially for help with the letters to a %erman princess.