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Abstract
In early 1783, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova was named director of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Twenty years earlier she had been the closest associate of Catherine II (“Catherine the Great”) when the latter ascended to the Russian throne. Known for her ingenuity, the princess had thought of the perfect way to convince the academicians of her devotion to science. She persuaded the elderly Euler, who for a long time had not been on good terms with the academic establishment and had not attended Academy conferences, to accompany her on her first visit there. The blind Euler appeared with his son and grandson. Dashkova later recalled, “I said to them that I asked Euler to take me to the session since, regardless of my own ignorance, I consider that by such a ceremonial act I was testifying to my respect for science and enlightenment.”
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Aleksei Krylov (1863–1945) was a leading Russian scientist who applied mathematics and mechanics to problems of shipbuilding and was a member of the Academy of Sciences.
The astronomer Gotfrid Geinzius (1709–1769).—Transl.
Johann Gmelin, a naturalist who arrived at the Academy a year after Euler.—Transl.
Ernst Biron was Anna Ioannovna’s favorite and a powerful figure at the Russian court.—Transl.
Named for John Pell (1611–1685).—Transl.
By Roger Apéry.—Transl.
By Tanguy Rivoal.—Transl.
In a famous speech in 1900, David Hilbert (1862–1943) posed 23 problems for the coming century.—Transl.
This letter was written to Giovanni Marinoni (1676–1755), an Italian mathematician and astronomer in Vienna. The English translation of this excerpt is taken from Brian Hopkins and Robin Wilson, “The truth about Königsberg,”College Math. J.,35 (2004), pp. 198–207.
From the English translation by David Brewster,Letters of Euler on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy Addressed to a German Princess, 3rd ed., W. and C. Tait, Edinburgh, 1823.
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© 2007 Second English edition Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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(2007). Leonhard Euler. In: Tales of Mathematicians and Physicists. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48811-0_7
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