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Three hundred years ago, a prolific and influential mathematician named
Leonhard Euler was born in Switzerland. During his 76-year lifetime, he wrote
more than 850 papers covering various topics such as fluid mechanics, naval
science, calculus, cartography, acoustics, optics, and solar, lunar, and
stellar motion. Despite this vast body of work, which some historians say
constitutes 25 percent of all scientific work published in the 18th century,
Euler is not a household name.
The Euler Archive is an online trove of maerial related to 18th-century Swiss
mathematician Leonhard Euler, depicted here in a painting by Emanuel
Handmann.
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Dartmouth students set out to help raise awareness of Euler and to make his
work more accessible. Graduate students Dominic Klyve and Lee Stemkoski, with
help from other graduate and undergraduate students, began about four years ago
to copy, scan, and post the original works of Euler online.
Their effort, called the Euler Archive, is getting
recognition from the Mathematical Association of
America, which is celebrating 2007 as the Year of Euler in honor of the
300th anniversary of his birth. In addition to Euler books, lectures, study
tours, and other activities, a poster was produced that promotes Dartmouth's
Euler Archive as a place to consult for further study.
"Perhaps the most striking thing about the Euler Archive, in my
mind," says Professor of Mathematics Carl Pomerance, "is that this
was a student project all the way, from the first germ of an idea through its
continuing execution."
"I think there are two basic reasons Euler is not more widely
known," says Klyve. "First, he wrote so much that it's frankly
difficult to comprehend it all. Second, his original writings are difficult to
find, and they haven't all been translated into English. Publication of his
complete works began in 1907, and it's still not complete."
Both Klyve and Pomerance acknowledge the initial support of the Dartmouth Library, which owns a copy
of the Opera Omnia, the encyclopedia-in-progress of Euler's works.
With the Library's blessing, the first papers were scanned and posted, and that
provided the incentive to get other academics and other libraries involved.
With financial support from Presence Switzerland, The Swiss House for Advanced
Research and Education, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research,
and Dartmouth's Department of
Mathematics, the online archive now boasts 834 of Euler's papers and books,
all available for free download.
"Since its inception, the Euler Archive has expanded to include not
just original works, but also secondary sources and translations," says
Klyve. "In the past three years, we have more than doubled the number of
Euler's works that have been translated into English, and we now have 74
translations available, more than half of which were published first on the
Euler Archive."
Klyve reports that the Euler Archive gets about 20,000 unique visits per
month from scholars, students, and others all over the world.
"I think that because of the archive, there's been a rapid increase of
scholarly work on Euler in recent years," he says. "We have been very
gratified by the comments we've received from the people who have used our work
in their own."
Pomerance adds, "The Euler Archive has turned out to be extraordinarily
useful to mathematical historians. Having centuries-old work readily available
on your laptop certainly beats long waits for documents retrieved through
interlibrary loan or your library's repository."
Visit the Euler Archive.
By SUSAN KNAPP
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