Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the objectives of the website?
2. Who is behind the website?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. Who is responsible for the website content?
5. How do I access the transcriptions and images from the main page?
6. What is your transcription policy?
7. The transcriptions look strange. How do I configure my browser to get the right display?
8. The transcriptions are displayed as XML source code. How do I fix this?
9. The math symbols don't print properly from my browser. How do I fix this?
10. How can I make the digitized image fit on one printed page?
11. Will all the letters be transcribed?
12. How often is content updated?
13. Who owns the copyright?
14. How do I cite the documents on the website?
15. Who did the annotation?
16. Have the documents on the website appeared elsewhere?
17. Do the documents on this website figure in OAIster?
18. How is the website generated?
19. Are there any websites similar to this one?

1. What are the objectives of the website?
   The Poincaré Correspondence website seeks to reflect the state of knowledge of the Poincaré correspondence. The goals and history of the Poincaré Edition Project are described here (in French).
2. Who is behind the website?
   The Poincaré Correspondence website is a joint undertaking of students and scholars affiliated with the Henri Poincaré Archives in Nancy, France. The transcriptions were established with the collaboration of the following scholars: É. Bolmont, A. Coret, A. Csiszar, A. Gharnati, G. Heinzmann, R. Krömer, Ph. Nabonnand, L. Rollet, M. Schiavon, T. Volpe, and S. Walter. Editorial assistance was provided by P.-E. Bour, C. Clozza, P. Doh, S. Hannaire, A. Husson, A. Klein, M. Sakhri, and A. Tiusan.
3. Who pays the bills?
   The Poincaré Project is sponsored by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Project SSM20: Sources of mathematical knowledge in the early 20th century), the Lorraine Region, the Communauté Urbaine du Grand Nancy, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Nancy.
4. Who is responsible for the website content?
   Scott Walter edits the Henri Poincaré Correspondence website; please direct your comments, queries, and suggestions to him.
5. How do I access the transcriptions and images from the main page?
   There are two methods available. You can browse either the alphabetical index or the chronological index, and click on the links to transcriptions and images. The second method employs a search engine, and concerns the transcriptions only: you enter a search term in the form provided on the main page, click a button, and get a page of links to documents matching the term. To consult a particular document, click on its link.
6. What is your transcription policy?
   Page breaks are indicated only in the Mittag-Leffler correspondence, and then by a forward slash (/). Paragraph breaks are always reproduced when indicated unambiguously in the MS. Otherwise, breaks are introduced at the editor's discretion. Likewise, spelling errors are silently corrected, and variants neglected at the editor's discretion.
   Transcriptions of mathematical formulas may feature extra parentheses not found in the MS. These are added when necessary to enable browsers to display formulas with nested fractions. Likewise, certain symbols (TeX macros) have been substituted on occasion due to browser font limitations.
   Variants are indicated in footnotes, with struck-out passages displayed in boldface.
7. The transcriptions look strange. How do I configure my browser to get the right display?
   Some adjustment to your browser may be required in order to render symbols and accented characters correctly. All pages employ unicode character encoding (UTF-8), so you should verify that your browser is configured to render this encoding. Math symbols are represented using MathML; for configuration of Firefox or Mozilla, see the MathML in Mozilla page. For hints on the configuration of other browsers, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For users of Internet Explo*er, a free plug-in is available from Design Science. The Epiphany browser works "out of the box". So do Opera, Google Chrome, and Safari.
8. The transcriptions are displayed as XML source code. How do I fix this?
   Either switch to another browser (like Firefox, Google Chrome, Epiphany, or Opera), or install the free plug-in available from Design Science.
9. The math symbols don't print properly from my browser. How do I fix this?
   On Unix/Linux systems, you might try installing an Xprint server, which can handle MathML.
10. How can I make the digitized image fit on one printed page?
    The images are scaled to fit on an A4 page. Margins can be adjusted in the page setup of your browser. Otherwise, you might try saving the image locally (by right-clicking), opening it with image-processing software (such as The Gimp), and printing it from there.
11. Will all the letters be transcribed?
    Yes, all the letters will be transcribed. Poincaré's correspondence with G. Mittag-Leffler, and with physicists, chemists, engineers, astronomers, and geodesists has been transcribed in its entirety. The correspondence with mathematicians will follow by the end of 2010, and all the remaining correspondence will be transcribed by 2011.
12. How often is content updated?
    New transcriptions are added on a weekly basis, and existing transcriptions are corrected as part of the ongoing editorial process. Every transcription features a time stamp indicating the date of the most recent edit.
13. Who owns the copyright?
    The images on this site were created from many sources. Most of the images were established from documents from one of the following four sources: the Archives of the Academy of Sciences (Paris), the Library of the Institute of France (Paris), the Nobel Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Stockholm), and a private collection. A stamp on each image indicates the holder of copyright. Unauthorized reproduction of the images on this website is prohibited. All transcriptions found on this website are in the public domain.
14. How do I cite the documents on the website?
    There are two cases to consider. Digitized images from the Nobel Archives should be referenced:
    • The Nobel Archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm.
    All other documents should be referenced:
    • Henri Poincaré Correspondence, Electronic Edition, edited by the Henri Poincaré Archives, version of 2010-03-16.
15. Who did the annotations?
    The job of annotation falls to the volume editors, so the answer to this question depends on the volume in which a given document was published. The volume number of every published document appears in the calendar. Once you know the volume number, you can determine who edited the document in question by referring to the following table:

    Volume	Editors	Year of Publication
    1	Philippe Nabonnand	1999
    2	Scott Walter, Étienne Bolmont & André Coret	2007
    3	Scott Walter, Ralf Krömer, Philippe Nabonnand & Martina Schiavon	2009
    4	Philippe Nabonnand, Jean Mawhin, Klaus Volkert & Scott Walter	2010
    5	Laurent Rollet	2010
16. Have the documents on the website appeared elsewhere?
    The documents held in a private Parisian collection were reproduced on microfilm (35mm, B/W) by A.I. Miller in the 1970s with support from the American Institute of Physics. This microfilm can be consulted at the Niels Bohr Library (College Park).
    A selection of Poincaré's correspondence with mathematicians was edited by P. Dugac in volumes 7 (1986) and 10 (1989) of the Cahiers du séminaire d'histoire des mathématiques. Some of these transcriptions have been verified and reedited on this website. Others will follow.
    Transcriptions of Poincaré's correspondence with G. Mittag-Leffler were established and annotated by Ph. Nabonnand in the first volume of the Correspondance d'Henri Poincaré (Birkhäuser, 1999).
    Transcriptions of Poincaré's correspondence with physicists, chemists and engineers were established and annotated by S. Walter in collaboration with E. Bolmant and A. Coret, in the second volume of the Correspondance d'Henri Poincaré (Birkhäuser, 2007). All the letters from Volumes 1 and 2, including annotations, are accessible from this website.
17. Do the documents on this website figure in OAIster?
    Yes, metadata for all our documents are harvested by OAIster, courtesy of our colleagues at the Research Center for History of Science and Technology.
18. How is the website generated?
    This site relies on open-source software. Scaled manuscript images were generated from 600-dpi TIFF files with SANE and The Gimp. Transcriptions in XHTML are generated from LaTeX source by TtM, while the calendar is generated by a PHP script that reads a MySQL database. The search engine is provided by Swish-e. All of the above compile and run on a Debian GNU/Linux laptop.
19. Are there any websites similar to this one?
    Yes, indeed. A subset of Poincaré's correspondence may be consulted at the MPIWG-Berlin website. If you like reading Poincaré's letters, you'll probably enjoy perusing those of his contemporary, Arnold Sommerfeld, those of the 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin, those of the early 19th-century physicist André-Marie Ampère, or those of the late 17th-century mathematician and philosopher G.W. Leibniz.

Archives Henri Poincaré, UMR 7117 Edité le 2010-03-16