in the Minutes of the Academy[1], that no more solutions were to be examined of the problems of the duplication of the cube, the trisection of the angle, the quadrature of the circle, and that the same resolution should apply to machines for exhibiting perpetual motion. An account of the reasons which led to the adoption of this resolution, drawn up by Condorcet, who was then the perpetual Secretary of the Academy, is appended. It is interesting to remark the strength of the conviction of Mathematicians that the solution of the problem is impossible, more than a century before an irrefutable proof of the correctness of that conviction was discovered.
The popularity of the problem among non-Mathematicians may seem to require some explanation. No doubt, the fact of its comparative obviousness explains in part at least its popularity; unlike many Mathematical problems, its nature can in some sense be understood by anyone; although, as we shall presently see, the very terms in which it is usually stated tend to suggest an imperfect apprehension of its precise import. The accumulated celebrity which the problem attained, as one of proverbial difficulty, makes it an irresistible attraction to men with a certain kind of mentality. An exaggerated notion of the gain which would accrue to mankind by a solution of the problem has at various times been a factor in stimulating the efforts of men with more zeal than knowledge. The man of mystical tendencies has been attracted to the problem by a vague idea that its solution would, in some dimly discerned manner, prove a key to a knowledge of the inner connections of things far beyond those with which the problem is immediately connected.
The fact was well known to the Greek Geometers that the problems of the quadrature and the rectification of the circle are equivalent problems. It was in fact at an early time established that the ratio of the length of a complete circle to the diameter has a definite value equal to that of the area of the circle to that of a square of which the radius is side. Since the time of Euler this ratio has always been denoted by the familiar notation . The problem of "squaring the circle" is roughly that of constructing a square of which the area is equal to that enclosed by the circle. This is then equivalent to the problem of the rectification of the circle, i.e. of the determination of a
- ↑ Histoire de l'Académie royale, année 1775, p. 61.
