Jacques Salomon Hadamard and the Use of Symbols in Teaching Differential Calculus

Abstract

Scripta Universitatis, edited by Albert Einstein and first published in 1923, played a significant role in the establishment of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Articles appeared on the left half of the journal in the author’s chosen language and they were translated into Hebrew on the right half. The inaugural issue contained an article by the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard (8 December 1865 – 17 October 1963). Y. Wolfson of Kharkov translated it into Hebrew. An English translation is presented here, along with scans of the original first pages that were published in French and Hebrew. Documents pertaining to the origins of Scripta were translated from Hebrew into English in JMASM (2007, 6(1), p. 350-354).