Henri Poincaré

Henri Poincaré

1911

Date of Birth
April 29, 1854
Date of Death
July 17, 1912

Presentation of Bruce medal

Morse, Fremont, PASP 23, 73-84 (1911).

Other awards

Royal Astronomical Society, Gold medal, 1900, presented by G.H. Darwin, MNRAS 60, 406-415 (1900).
Royal Society of London, Sylvester Medal, 1901.

Some offices held

Académie des Sciences, President, 1906.

Biographical materials

l’Académie française [in French].
Anonymous, “Scientific Worthies,” Nature 90, 353-356 (1912).
Appell, P., Henri Poincaré (Paris, 1925) [in French].
Dantzig, Tobias, Henri Poincaré (Scribner’s, NY, 1954).
Dieudonné, Jean, Dictionary of Scientific Biography 11, 51-61.
The Exploratorium.
Gray, Jeremy, Henri Poincaré: A Scientific Biography (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013).
Lahanas, M., Physics [includes photo]
Lamontagne, Yann, PlanetMath.org
Le Laboratoire de Philosophie et d’Histoire des Sciences Archives Henri Poincaré, Archives H. Poincaré [Timeline, in French].
Lebon, Ernest, Notice sur Henri Poincaré, in Poincaré, H., Leçons sur les Hypotheses Cosmogoniques, 2nd ed. (Librairie Scientifique A. Hermann & Fils, Paris, 1913)
Lebon, Ernest, Henri Poincaré: Biographie, Bibliographie Analytique des Écrit (GauthierVillars, Paris, 1912).
Mawhin, Jean, “Henri Poincaré. A Life in the Service of Science,” Lecture presented at the Poincaré Symposium in Brussels, 8-9 October 2004.
Murzi, Mauro, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
O’Connor, J.J. & E.F. Robertson, The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive [includes 7 photos].
PlanetMath.org
Tenn, Joseph S., “Henri Poincaré: The Ninth Bruce Medalist,” Mercury  20, 4, 111 (1991).
Toulouse, E., Henri Poincaré (Paris, 1910) [in French].
Trachet, Tim, Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer, NY, 2007), pp. 921-22.
University of Maryland
Verhulst, Ferdinand, Henri Poincaré: Impatient Genius (Springer, 2012).
Washington Area Chaos Group.
More biographical materials
And still more

Obituaries

DeLury, Alfred T., JRASC 6, 309-21 (1912).
Lebon, Ernest, PASP 24, 260-65 (1912).
Anonymous, Observatory 35, 309-10.
Sarton, George, Bulletin de la Société belge d’Astronomie XXXIV, 1-11, 37-48 (1913) (pdf).

Portraits

AIP Center for History of Physics
Hellenica
Le Laboratoire de Philosophie et d’Histoire des Sciences Archives Henri Poincaré, Galerie photographique [a very large collection]
Library of Congress
Miller, Jeff, Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps

Named after him

Lunar crater Poincaré
Minor Planet #2021 Poincaré
Université Henri Poincaré
The Poincaré Conjecture

Bibliography

Papers, etc.

Laboratoire d’Histoire des Sciences et de Philosophie - Archives Henri-Poincaré is publishing Poincaré’s correspondence and putting many of his writings online.

Other References: Historical

The site of Le Laboratoire de Philosophie et d’Histoire des Sciences Archives Henri Poincaré contains a great many documents related to Poincaré.

Barrow-Green, June, Poincaré and the Three Body Problem, (American Mathematical Society/London Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1997).

Browder, Felix, ed., The Mathematical Heritage of Henri Poincaré (American Mathematical Society, 1983). Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, vol. 39.

Brown, E.W., An Introductory Treatise on the Lunar Theory, (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1896; Dover, 1960)

Brown, Kevin, MathPages, “Poincaré Contemplates Copernicus”
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath305/kmath305.htm

Brush, Stephen G., “Poincaré and cosmic evolution,” Physics Today 33, 3, 42-49 (1980).

Cajori, H., History of Mathematics, 3rd ed. (Chelsea, NY, 1980).

Charpentier, Eric, L'héritage scientifique de Poincaré (Belin, 2006).

Cook, Peter D., The Ages of Mathematics, vol. IV (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1977).

Dilworth, Craig, History and Philosophy of Science 21, 431 (1990).

Folina, Janet, “Poincaré on Mathematics, Intuition and the Foundations of Science,“ in Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1994, v. 2: Symposia and Invited Papers. (1994), pp. 217-226.

Hadamard, Jacques, “l’Oeuvre mathématique de Poincaré,” Acta Mathematica 38, 203-87 (1921).

Hadamard, Jacques S., “The Early Scientific Work of Henri Poincaré: Lectures delivered at the Rice Institute in May, 1925,” Rice Institute Pamphlet 20, 1, 1-86 (1933).

Hadamard, Jacques S., “The Later Scientific Work of Henri Poincaré: Lectures delivered at the Rice Institute in March, 1920,” Rice Institute Pamphlet 9, 3, 111-183 (1922).

Hadamard, Jacques S., “Le centenaire de Henri Poincaré,” Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 7, 2, 101-08 (1954).

Irons, F.E., Poincaré’s 1911-12 Proof of Quantum Discontinuity Interpreted as Applying to Atoms,“ Am. J. Phys. 69, 879-84 (2001).

Kahan, T., “Sur les origines de la théorie de la relativité restreinte,” Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applications 12, 2, 159-65 (1959).

Logunov, A.A., Henri Poincaré and Relativity Theory (unpublished, 2004-05)
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0408077

Newman, James R., ed., World of Mathematics, v. 4, p. 2041.

Stump, David, “Henri Poincaré’s Philosophy of Science,” Studies in History & Philosophy of Science 20, 335 (1989).

Struve, Otto, “Poincaré, Henri, and His Cosmological Studies,” Sky & Telescope 17, 226 (1958).

Walter, Scott, “Poincaré, Henri (1854-1912): French mathematician and scientist,” Preliminary version of an article in Noretta Koertge (ed.), New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 6, 121-125 (Scribner’s, NY, 2007)
http://scottwalter.free.fr/papers/hpnewdsb.htm

Wikiquote [quotations attributed to Poincaré]
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincare.

Zeipel, H. v., “l’Oeuvere astronomique d’Henri Poincaré,” Acta Mathematica 38, 309-85 (1920).

Search ADS for works about Poincare

Other References: Scientific

See the bibliography of 683 publications on the site of le Laboratoire de Philosophie et d’Histoire des Sciences Archives Henri Poincaré.

Some 23 documents, including several whole books, are available (in the original French) online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Cick on Recherche and then enter Henri Poincare as Auteur. Many of Poincaré’s books and papers may also be found on the site of the Archives Henri Poincaré.

Poincaré, Henri, Oeuvres de Henri Poincaré (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1934-65). Several volumes are online.

Poincaré, H., “Sur certaines solutions particulières du probléme des trois corps,” Bulletin Astronomique, Serie I, 1 65-74 (1884).

Poincaré, H., “Sur l'équilibre d'une masse fluide animée d'un mouvement de rotation,” Bulletin Astronomique, Serie I, 2 109-18 (1885) and 2, 405-413 (1885).

Poincaré, H., “Note sur la stabilité de l'anneau de Saturne,” Bulletin Astronomique, Serie I, 2 507-08 (1885).

Poincaré, H., “Sur la figure de la terre,” Bulletin Astronomique, Serie I, 6 49-60 (1889).

Poincaré, H., “Sur le problème des trois corps,” Bulletin Astronomique, Serie I, 8 12-24 (1891).

Poincaré, Henri, Les Methodes Nouvelles de la Mecanique Celeste (Gauthier-Villars et fils, Paris, 1892-99). Translated, edited and introduced by Daniel L. Goroff, as New Methods of Celestial Mechanics, (American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, NY, 1993).

Poincaré, H., La Théorie de Maxwell et les oscillations hertziennes (G. Carréé et C. Naud, 1899).

Poincaré, H., Leçons de mécanique céleste: professées à la Sorbonne, Tome 1 (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1905-10).

Poincaré, H., “The Future of Mathematics,” Revue generale des Sciences pures et appliquées 19, 23 (1908) [English translation].

Poincaré, Henri, Leçons sur les hypothèses cosmogoniques professées à la Sorbonne, rédigées par Henri Vergne ...(A. Hermann et fils, Paris, 1911).

Search ADS for works by Poincaré

Other Works: Popularizations, Philosophy, History, etc.

Poincaré, Henri, La Science et l’hypothèse, translated as Science and Hypothesis (Scott, 1905). [Alternate site.]

Poincaré, H., “Grandeur de l'Astronomie,” L’Astronomie 68, 231-36 (1954) [lecture given in 1903].

Poincaré, H., “The Milky Way and the Theory of Gases,” Popular Astronomy 14, 475-88 (1906).

Poincaré, H., Science and Method, translated by Francis Maitland (Thomas Nelson & Sons, London). [Retrospective review by David Ruelle, Nature 391, 760 (1998)]

Poincaré, H., Les sciences et les humanités

Poincaré, H., “Relativity of Space” [from Science and Method]

Poincaré, Henri, Mathematics and Science: Last Essays (Dernières Pensées), translated by John W. Bolduc (Dover, 1963; first published in French by Ernest Flammarion, 1913).