华里司:自学成才的数学家、欧洲大陆微积分的传播者

William Wallace:A Self-Trained Mathematician,Early British Propagator of Continental Calculus

华里司(W.Wallace,1768-1843)是一位逆境成才的苏格兰数学家,他发现了许多几何定理,最著名的是"华里司线"和"华里司点";他最早译介勒让德和拉格朗日的有关论文并引入莱布尼茨的微积分记号;他为《爱丁堡百科全书》所写的"流数"篇是英国第一篇采用莱布尼茨记号的微积分专论;他撰写了许多数学论文,特别是分析方面的论文;他发明了数种数学仪器;他还把微积分应用到自治市征税方法上;他为《大英百科全书》所写的"流数"篇和"代数"篇被译为中文,成为晚清中国具有重要影响的微积分和代数学教材。华里司在英国长期被忽略,但墙内开花墙外俏,英国传教士傅兰雅(J.Fryer,1839-1928)成就了他在中国的名声。

William Wallace(1768-1843),a self-trained Scottish mathematician,discovered many geometric theorems,of which the best known are 'Wallace line' and 'Wallace point'.He was the first to translate the relevant papers of Legendre and Lagrange into English and one of the first to introduce into Britain Leibniz's notations of differential and integral calculus.His article on fluxions in Edinburgh Encyclopaedia is the first complete treatise on calculus which adopts Leibniz's notations.He published many original mathematical papers,especially in analysis.He invented some mathematical instruments.He applied the differential calculus to the taxation of boroughs.His articles on algebra and fluxions were successively translated into Chinese by Fryer(1839-1928) and Hua Hengfang(1833-1902),thus becoming important Chinese textbooks on algebra and calculus.These textbooks made him well known to literati in China late in the 19th century,though he has long been neglected in his own motherland.