Publisher's Synopsis
LIKE many other branches of mathematics, the theory of invariants has gone through stages similar to those of gold-mining. We may reckon Gauss, Lagrange, and Eisenstein among the pioneers; Boole, Cayley, Sylvester, and Salmon found the first big nuggets; and Aronhold's symbolic method may be compared to the rocker which extracted gold-dust from alluvial deposits. Finally, the refractory problem of finding complete systems led Gordan to invent his transvectant formulae, corresponding to the stamps and cyanide tanks now used in South Africa.The book contains several constructive simplications of standard proofs and, in connection with invariants of nite groups of transformations and the algebraical theory of ternariants, formulations of fundamental algorithms which may, it is hoped, be of aid to investigators.
