The Bureau des Longitudes: An Institutional Study

Schiavon, Martina

doi:10.1057/9781137520647_5

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Poincaré was invited to maintain the strong reputation long established in celestial mechanics. 24 The Bureau, while monitoring the heavens and the Earth, played a much larger role in national affairs than its name might suggest. The historian Schiavon 24 quoted Honoré de Balzac's (1799-1850) quip that in France even love was governed by the geometry of the Bureau des longitudes.…”

Section: Geodesymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…24 The Bureau, while monitoring the heavens and the Earth, played a much larger role in national affairs than its name might suggest. The historian Schiavon 24 quoted Honoré de Balzac's (1799-1850) quip that in France even love was governed by the geometry of the Bureau des longitudes. 25 The board members of the Bureau were frequently drawn from the mathematical section of the Académie des sciences, and as the leading French mathematician, Poincaré's appointment was unsurprising.…”

Section: Geodesymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Poincaré and his polarization sphere

Kahr

2021

Chirality

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In a text (1892) on light, Jules Henri Poincaré introduced a geometrical device for tracking the polarization of state of light interacting with matter. Poincaré first mapped all polarization ellipses onto the surface of sphere and changes of state were represented as rotations from one point to another about prescribed axes depending on linear optical properties of the medium. Here, we consider how Poincaré, the mathematician, invented his sphere. Poincaré's professional activities in the service of geodesy appear at first glance to provide a borrowed geometry for his one-to-one mapping of polarization ellipses to global lines of latitude and longitude. However, this association falls apart in the face of a close reading of Poincaré's biography and his influences, especially the research interests of his teachers from the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecoles de Mines. The work of Tissot and Mallard on distortion ellipses in cartography and the etiology of optical activity in crystals, respectively, together with Poincaré's own study of the qualitative theory of differential equations, provide the iconography of, and motivation for, the sphere. Whether Poincaré's mentors were unwitting partners in the invention of the sphere-it is impossible to be sure-Poincaré's otherworldly geometric sensibilities carried him through isometries (rotations) on hyperbolic planes and beyond. The apparent ingenuity behind Poincaré's sphere is diminished in comparison to his fulsome achievements. Moreover, Poincaré's considerations of the psychology of invention further emphasize that sometimes great ideas arrive to those fortunate to receive them by mechanisms that resist interpretation.

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Section: Geodesymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Geodesymentioning

confidence: 99%