THE BERNOULLI PROJECT

Already in the eighteenth century, it was recognised that it was desirable to have the large volume of published work, of the first generation of Bernoullis, available in collected format. This was done in the case of Johann I during his lifetime. Under the supervision of Johann II, Gabriel Cramer edited the four-volume set Opera Omnia Johannis Bernoulli published in Geneva 1742. (It was reissued with an introduction by J. E. Hofmann, under the imprint of Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, 1968). Parallel with this collection of the work of Johann I, the published work of Jacob I was also being edited by Cramer under the direction of Nicolaus I: it appeared in two volumes titled Jacobi Bernoulli Basiliensis Opera Geneva, 1744. (It was reissued in Bruxelles in 1967 as a unit of Editions Culture et Civilization.) Except for the reprinting of certain items, such as the Prize Essay of 1740 already noted, it was not then contemplated doing such a comprehensive edition of the works of Daniel. It should also be mentioned that when a certain selection of Leibniz papers was published in 1745, it included almost all of the Johann I—Leibniz correspondence.

Over the next hundred years, while little was done in the way of editing and publishing, much was done in the collecting and identifying of material of the senior Bernoullis, particularly with regard to the correspondence. Associated with the accumulation of this material were Johann III Bernoulli, Daniel Huber and Peter Merian, as well as Paul-Heinrich Fuss, Fritz Burckhardt, Gustaf Eneström, Moritz Cantor, Paul Stäckel, Karl Bopp, Paul Schafheitlin and others.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the Zürich astronomer Rudolf Wolf (1816–93) was engaged in his important work Biographien zur Kulturgeschichte der Schweiz which was published as a series beginning about midcentury. The first volume in the series, published in 1858, contained the biography of Jacob I; Johann I appeared in volume 2 (1859), with Daniel in volume 3 (1860). This was the first time that there was made available to a wide public a perspective on the "great three" of the Bernoulli dynasty. In his research for this work Wolf brought to light much of the correspondence and other documents from the hands of various members of the dynasty—particularly papers from the hands of the "great three" and also of Jacob Hermann.

After the first editions of the works of Jacob and of Johann Bernoulli in 1742 and 1744, as well as of the Johann I—Leibniz correspondence, much was done in the collecting and identifying of material of the senior Bernoullis, particullarly with regard to the correspondence. Then in 1877 there came the discovery by Gyldén, in the observatory of Stockholm, Sweden, of the vast consignment of correspondence from the collection of Johann III—over 2,800 items—which the latter, in a period of financial difficulty, had sold to the Swedish Institution. This find gave an additional stimulus to the quest for the further collection of material. By the year 1880 from an inspection of the material then accumulated it was clear—particularly to Wolf—that perhaps the unpublished material may be as significant as that published.

Following the death of Wolf in 1893, the next milestone is 1935 when Otto Spiess on his own initiative assumed responsibility for the left unfinished by Wolf. For the work he set out to do, Spiess succeeded in awakening the interest of several individuals as well as that of certain Swiss institutions in its importance. He received financial support from J. R. Geigy-Schlumberger as well as a commitment of support from the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft" in Basel. It was on the basis of these commitments of support that the foundations of the project were laid.

Ó Mathúna, 1999  

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