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Document number: 2645
Date: 01 Jul 1865
Recipient: SYLVESTER James Joseph
Author: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Last updated: 14th March 2012

Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
July 1. 1865

Dear Sir

I was glad to see in the Times <1> an account of a mathematical discovery of yours which appears to be important - The theory of equations is a subject to which I have frequently turned my attention and have met with various little formulæ &c. &c.

I enclose the following, perhaps it may be selfevident to you, but I have not found anything like it in the old treatises of Algebra (Wood <2> &c.) which I have in my library here.

[illegible deletion] "the Cubic equation

x3 - px2 + (p - 3)x + 1 = 0

cannot have an impossible root - provided that p is a real quantity" -


Notes:

1. See 'A Mathematical Discovery', The Times (London), Wednesday, 28 June 1865, p. 12.

2. James Wood ( ca.1759-1839), Dean of Ely, wrote Elements of Algebra (1795).

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