This little work was published as a chapter in Merriman and Woodward's Higher Mathematics. It was written before the numerous surveys of the development of science in the past hundred years, which appeared at the close of the nineteenth century, and it therefore had more reason for being then than now, save as it can now call attention, to these later contributions.The conditions under which it was published limited it to such a small compass that it could do no more than present a list of the most prominent names in connection with a few important topics. Since it is necessary to use the...