Abstract
Joseph Pérès (1890–1962) was a singular case among the French mathematicians who have experienced the troubled years of WW1. For almost every young man of his generation, the war became a key moment whose consequences have influenced them during their whole life. The war had been fatal for Gateaux. It left its permanent mark on Julia, horribly wounded in 1915. For many others, such as Fréchet, Lévy or Châtelet, it caused deep changes in their careers. But Pérès seemed to have crossed the period not only unharmed, but more surprisingly almost without noticing what was going on around him. Of course, this view is somewhat simplistic and we shall see how in his letters to Volterra he made several comments on a war he could not completely ignore. However, it seems that the key-moments of his life were organized without taking into account the ongoing events.
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Notes
- 1.
V. Volterra: Questioni generali sulle equazioni integrali ed integro-differenziali, Rendiconti Accademia Lincei, 20 febbraio 1910.
- 2.
V. Volterra: Leçons sur les fonctions de lignes, Recueillies et rédigées par Joseph Pérès, Gauthier-Villars, 1913.
- 3.
V. Volterra: Teoria delle potenze, dei logaritmi e delle funzioni di composizione, Memorie della R. Accademia dei Lincei, Vol. XI, Ser. 5, 1916.
- 4.
V. Volterra et J. Pérès: Leçons sur la composition et les fonctions permutables, Gauthier-Villars, 1924.
- 5.
Vito Volterra, nel primo centenario della nascita 1860–1960, Acc. Lincei, Roma, 1961.
- 6.
The procedure of Pli cacheté (sealed letter) is proposed by Paris Academy to allow a scientist to prove his priority on a discovery. The letter is not opened till the scientist himself does not ask for it, or a period of 100 years has passed. In some exceptional cases, the opening may also be asked by members of the scientist’s family. The latter happened for instance in 2000 with the opening of Doeblin’s last memoir on Kolmogorov’s equation required by Doeblin’s brother (see details in [10]). Generally, the pli cacheté is used when the scientist is worried about his personal destiny (in case of war for instance) or in case of hard competition. As he could not have been worried for his own security, Pérès had probably feared possible competitors but it is not clear who they could have been, apart from Volterra himself. Maybe he had in mind the young American mathematicians, in particular Evans who was in Rome just before himself and was in very friendly terms with Volterra. Evans is quoted together with Pérès in the introduction of the aforementioned Volterra’s 1916 memoir at the Lincei as the two persons having systematically developed Volterra’s researches on integral equations. Moreover, in January 1917, the USA have not yet entered the war and Pérès was maybe anxious to consolidate his position. The pli cacheté was officially registered by Paris Academy on 29 January 1917 under the title Sur certains développements en séries. Pérès asked the opening of his letter on 8 April 1918. The contents was given for reviewing to Hadamard, and subsequently published in the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie on 6 May 1918.
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Mazliak, L., Tazzioli, R. (2009). The Case of Pérès. In: Mathematicians at war. Archimedes, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2740-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2740-5_7
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