Hermite and Lipschitz: A correspondence and its echoes

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the French mathematician Charles Hermite wrote thousands of letters to dozens of correspondents. Mixing personal, political, academic and mathematical matters, as well as views on mathematics and its development, these letters offer a vivid picture of the mathematical landscape of the time. Particularly interesting is the fact that many themes appear repetitively among several correspondents, while some others, contrastingly, are specific to only one. Such echoes and contradictions are, of course, evocative, but also constitute a challenge to a potential editor: neither strict chronology nor restriction to one correspondent allow us to take them into account. We discuss here these problems and some solutions, while focussing on the exchanges between Hermite and the German mathematician Rudolf Lipschitz.