When Leonhard Euler first arrived at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at the age of 20, his career was supported and promoted by the Academy’s secretary, the Prussian jurist and amateur mathematician Christian Goldbach (1690-1764). Their encounter would grow into a lifelong friendship, as evinced by nearly 200 letters sent over 35 years. This exchange – Euler’s most substantial long-term correspondence – has now been edited for the first time with an English translation, ample commentary and documentary indices. These present an overview of 18th-century number theory, its sources and repercussions, many details of the protagonists’ biographies, and a wealth of insights into academic life in St. Petersburg and Berlin between 1725 and 1765. Part I includes an introduction and the original texts of the Euler-Goldbach letters, while Part II presents the English translations and documentary indices.

This volume contains the work of the great Swiss mathematician on differential geometry, a field marked by some of his greatest achievements. Between 1690 and 1700, Jacob Bernoulli published twelve treatises in the scientific journal Acta Eruditorum on the use of infinitesimal methods to answer geometrical questions. Preparatory notes for most of these papers and on many other themes are found in Bernoulli's scientific diary Meditationes, from which twentynine texts are published here for the first time. Among the curves considered are the isochrones (lines of constant descent), the parabolic spiral, the loxodrome, the cycloid, the tractrix, and the logarithmic spiral (Bernoulli's spira mirabilis, which also adorns his tombstone). The description of these curves by differential equations and by geometrical constructions, their rectification and quadrature, and the determination of their evolutes and caustics offered Bernoulli and his colleagues a range of challenging problems, many of them relevant for mechanical or optical applications. The French mathematician André Weil, who lived in the United States until his recent death, has greatly influenced 20th century mathematics, among other things, as a founding member of the Bourbaki group. For many years he has pursued intensive studies of the history of mathematics, especially number theory and algebraic geometry. Weil's introduction to this volume places Jacob Bernoulli's contribution to differential geometry in a line of development from Descartes, Huygens and Barrow through Newton's und Leibniz's epochal innovations right up to the codification of the subject by Euler. Martin Mattmüller, secretary of the Bernoulli Edition at Basel, edited the source text. His commentaries consider particular topics in differential geometry with reference to their historical context at the end of the 17th century.