65 Harley St <1>
Thursday Evg
Dear Sir
My reason for declining Mr Murphy’s paper<2> was that I intended laying before the society shortly a paper on the same subject,<3> & therefore I thought myself not in a position to comment upon Mr M’s researches.
Otherwise I should have been happy to lend the Council any assistance in my power –
Do Mr M’s investigations lead him to the same result as I arrive at, the reduction of the 6th degree to the 5th?
I hope you received a note<4> from me on the subject the other day; I forgot to ask you when I saw you today whether you approved of employing the assistance of practised calculators, to enable this question to be satisfactorily elucidated, which 1 or 2 well calculated examples would sufficiently accomplish –
Yours very Truly,
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Harley Street, London.
2. Probably Robert Murphy (1806–1843), a mathematician who submitted several papers to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
3. WHFT, ‘Researches in the Integral Calculus’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, v. 127, part I (1837), pp. 1–18.
4. See Doc. No: 03421.