![POINCARÉ, Henri (1854-1912). Autograph manuscript signed twice ("H. Poincaré"), his paper "Sur la Théorie Cinétique des gaz," [Paris, 1894]. 41 pages, 8o, approximately 100 small corrections, emendations or excisions, printer's pencil marks throughout, some browning and marginal chipping, few marginal repairs occasionally touching letters. Cloth folding case.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2002/NYR/2002_NYR_01174_0208_000(050405).jpg?w=1)
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POINCARÉ, Henri (1854-1912). Autograph manuscript signed twice ("H. Poincaré"), his paper "Sur la Théorie Cinétique des gaz," [Paris, 1894]. 41 pages, 8o, approximately 100 small corrections, emendations or excisions, printer's pencil marks throughout, some browning and marginal chipping, few marginal repairs occasionally touching letters . Cloth folding case.
ON MAXWELL'S KINETIC THEORY: POINCARé'S ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
Poincaré, one of the greatest mathematical minds of the 19th century, made important contributions to physics-he was a contender for the Nobel Prize for physics in 1910 (losing to van der Waals). On two occasions he played an historic role in the development of new ideas and discoveries that revolutionized 19th-century physics. In late 1895 Poincaré was one of the recipients of the preprint of Röntgen's Über eine neue Art von Strahlen, describing the discovery of x-rays. Poincaré's comments to Becquerel about Röntgen's exciting discovery inspired Becquerel to pursue the possible connection between x-rays and fluorescence, which in turn led to the discovery of radioactivity. Poincaré also took active part in discussions about Lorentz's electron theory, and was the first to observe that "the Lorentz transformations form a group, isomorphic to the group leaving invariant the quadratic form x2 + y2 + z2 - t2 " (DSB). For this reason, many physicists give Poincaré a share of the credit for the invention of the special theory of relativity.
The present paper, published in Vol. 5 of the Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées (1894), contains Poincaré's detailed exposition of Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, written for the benefit of the French scientific community, which was far less familiar with Maxwell's ideas than its British counterpart ("cette théorie a été beaucoup moins cultivée par les physiciens frangais que par les anglais"). Maxwell, along with Clausius, was responsible for establishing the kinetic theory of gases in the 1860s, but the theory is complex and not free from difficulties, which even thirty years later were still being debated by the likes of Lord Kelvin, whose unspecified "objection" to Maxwell's theory Poincaré notes in the first paragraph of his paper. Manuscripts by Poincaré are EXTREMELY RARE; to our knowledge, this is the only one on physics to come on the market in 25 years. Segrè, X-Rays to Quarks, p. 26. Twentieth Century Physics I, pp. 262-83.
ON MAXWELL'S KINETIC THEORY: POINCARé'S ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
Poincaré, one of the greatest mathematical minds of the 19th century, made important contributions to physics-he was a contender for the Nobel Prize for physics in 1910 (losing to van der Waals). On two occasions he played an historic role in the development of new ideas and discoveries that revolutionized 19th-century physics. In late 1895 Poincaré was one of the recipients of the preprint of Röntgen's Über eine neue Art von Strahlen, describing the discovery of x-rays. Poincaré's comments to Becquerel about Röntgen's exciting discovery inspired Becquerel to pursue the possible connection between x-rays and fluorescence, which in turn led to the discovery of radioactivity. Poincaré also took active part in discussions about Lorentz's electron theory, and was the first to observe that "the Lorentz transformations form a group, isomorphic to the group leaving invariant the quadratic form x
The present paper, published in Vol. 5 of the Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées (1894), contains Poincaré's detailed exposition of Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, written for the benefit of the French scientific community, which was far less familiar with Maxwell's ideas than its British counterpart ("cette théorie a été beaucoup moins cultivée par les physiciens frangais que par les anglais"). Maxwell, along with Clausius, was responsible for establishing the kinetic theory of gases in the 1860s, but the theory is complex and not free from difficulties, which even thirty years later were still being debated by the likes of Lord Kelvin, whose unspecified "objection" to Maxwell's theory Poincaré notes in the first paragraph of his paper. Manuscripts by Poincaré are EXTREMELY RARE; to our knowledge, this is the only one on physics to come on the market in 25 years. Segrè, X-Rays to Quarks, p. 26. Twentieth Century Physics I, pp. 262-83.