Stockholm, F. & G. Beijer, 1882. 4to (28.5 x 22.0 cm). 62 pp. Original printed wrappers.

Rare first paper by Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) on his most noticeable contributions to mathematics, namely his "founding" paper on automorphic functions, in which he also introduced the term 'Fuchsien'. "In the summer of 1880, the 26-year-old Henri Poincaré, who was trying to construct automorphic functions, suddenly found the right way to do it, while entering the bus... Poincaré has found Fuchsians groups with brillant geometrical intuitions and has defined some of the fundamental notions of discrete group theory" (Bohnke). "The development of mathematics in the nineteenth century began under the shadow of a giant, Carl Friedrich Gauss; it ended with the domination by a genius of similar magnitude, Henri Poincaré ... before he was thirty years of age, Poincaré became world famous with his epoch-making discovery of the 'automorphic functions' of one complex variable" (DSB). Published in the first volume of Acta Mathematica. A few, much smaller, unrelated contributions follow on pp. 63-96. Provenance: donated by the editor of the Acta Mathematica, G. Mittag-Leffler (inscription on the front wrapper). Some soiling and toning to wrappers, spine ends cover slightly chipped, front wrapper starting; otherwise very good, clean. G. Bohnke (1996) Henri Poincaré et la découverte des groupes fuchsiens ou la géométrie en action in: Philosophia Scientiae 1(4) pp. 97-105; DSB XI, pp. 51-61.