Re: [HM] Poincare on Dreyfus?

William C Waterhouse (wcw@math.psu.edu)
Thu, 27 Aug 1998 16:43:16 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 26 Aug 1998, cxm7@po.CWRU.Edu (Colin McLarty) wrote:

> A bibliography of Poincare's works includes:
>
> "Sur l'application du calcul des probabilites" in AFFAIRE DREYFUS.
> LA REVISION DU PROCES DE RENNES. ENQUETE DE LA CHAMBRE CRIMINELLE DE LA COUR
> DE CASSATION, 5 MARS--19 NOVEMBRE 1904 t.3. Paris: Ligue des Droits de
> l'Homme 1909. pp.500-600 (with Darboux and Appell).

> Has anyone here seen this work? Does it comment on the Dreyfus case
> or is it entirely math exposition? Is the citation quite correct? Is it
> included in Poincare's OEUVRES? I suspect it is not, since it has joint
> authorship. ...

I have not seen the work, and it is not in the OEUVRES. But there
is a reference to it in M. Drouin (ed.), _L'Affaire Dreyfus de A a` Z_
(Flammarion, 1994), p. 493:

Trois des plus grands mathe'maticiens franc,ais, tous
signataires de l'Appel, Henri Poincare', Gaston Darboux
et Paul Appell, de'molissent l'imposture scientifique
de Bertillon dans un rapport adresse' a` la Cour de
cassation en 1904.

So I expect it dealt specifically with the handwriting analysis
in the Dreyfus case.

William C. Waterhouse
Penn State