``French Institute, Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris, 10 July 1820. Sir,--The Academy has received with a lively degree of interest, the Essay that you obligingly addressed to it on Involution and Evolution, or a Method of determining the Numerical Value of any Function of an unknown Quantity. I am desired, in its name, to thank you for sending this interesting work, which has been honourably placed in the Library of the Academy; and to express the sense of obligation which the Institution entertains for your attention. Receive, Sir, I beg, the assurance of the most distinguished respect with which I am, Your's etc. B.G. Cuvier ''-- Letter from the Perpetual Secretary to Mr Peter Nicholson. Although almost entirely forgotten as a mathematician, Nicholson is still remembered as an architect and in the 1978 edition of his standard work, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600--1840, Howard M. Colvin claims that ``Nicholson was one of the leading intellects behind nineteenth-century building technology. He used his great ability as a mathematician to simplify many old formulae used by architectural draughtsmen as well as to devise new ones.''
Howard M. Colvin
Nicholson