Bruxelles, Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1883. Folio (29.4 x 23.0 cm). 82 pp. Contemporary blind wrappers.

Important paper by the French-Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan (1814-1894). "He worked on continued fractions, descriptive geometry, number theory and combinatorics. He gave his name to a unique surface (periodic minimal surface in the space) that he discovered in 1855. Before that, he had stated the famous Catalan's conjecture, which was published in 1844 and was eventually proved in 2002 by the Romanian mathematician Preda Mihăilescu. He introduced the Catalan numbers to solve a combinatorial problem" (see Wikipedia). Inscribed and signed by the author on the title page, to "mon cher ancièn élève Deruyts" (i.e., the Belgian mathematician François Deruyts, who wrote a thesis titled: Génération d'une surface du troisième ordre; sur quelques transformations géométriques). Offprint from the academy's Mémoires. Wrappers slightly chipped at edges, otherwise a fine copy.