STIELTJES, (THOMAS). - THE "STIELTJES INTEGRAL" INTRODUCED.

Recherches sur les fractions continues.

(Paris, Gauthier-Villars), 1894. 4to. No wrappers. In: "Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de L'Academie des Sciences", Tome 118, No 25. Pp. (1371-) 1442. (Entire issue offered). Le Chatelier's paper: pp. 1401-1411.

First printing of the milestone paper in which Stieltjes introduced the "Stieltjes Integral". He is often called "the father of the analytic theory of continued fractions" for his work in this area. "On 18 June 1894 he published Recherches sur les fractions continues in Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences. A fuller version of this work appeared in the Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse." The integral which he introduced here while solving the moment problem, that is, given the moments of all orders of a body, find the distribution of its mass.

".... a mathematical milestone. The work represents the first general treatment of continued fractions as part of complex analytic function theory; previously, only special cases had been considered." (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Parkinson "Breakthroughs" 1894 M.

Order-nr.: 49880