Argand Diagram Argand Diagrams, the method of drawing complex numbers as vectors on a coordinate plane, are named for Jean R. Argand (1768-1822), an amateur mathematician who described them in a paper in 1806. A similar method, although less complete, had been suggested as early as 120 years before by John Wallis, and developed extensively by Casper Wessel(1745-1818), a Norwegian surveyor. (Actually, at the time Wessel lived, the area where he was born was a part of Denmark. Norway became an independent government in 1905 after years of domination by Denmark and Sweden.) It may be that even then, the method was unknown to Gauss and he had to rediscover it for himself in 1831 although it has been suggested that Gauss may have discovered the idea as early as Wessel. Some parts of his Demonstratio Nova would seem almost miraculously derived without a knowledge of the ideas of the geometry of complex numbers.
Wessel's paper was published in Danish, and was not circulated in the languages more common to mathematics at that time. It was not until 1895 that his paper came to the attention of the mathematical community, long after the name Argand Diagram had stuck. Incredibly, there were at least three more individuals who may have independently discovered and written on the same idea; Abbe Bruee, C. V. Mourney, and John Warren.
Argand's Book, Essai sur une maniere de representer les quantities imaginaires dans les constructions geometriques, might have suffered the same fate as Wessel except for an unusual chain of events. I give here the version as presented by Michael Crowe in his A History of Vector Analysis
In 1813 J. F. Francais published a short memoir in volume IV of Gergonne's Annales de mathematiques in which Francais presented the geometrical representation of complex numbers. At the conclusion of his paper Francais stated that the fundamental ideas in his paper were not his own, he had found them in a letter written by Legendre to his (Francis') brother who had died. In this letter Legendre discussed the ideas of an unnamed mathematician. Francis added that he hoped this mathematician would make himself known and publish his results.
The unnamed mathematician had in fact already published his ieas, for Legendre's friend was Jean Robert Argand. Hearing of Francais' paper, Argand immediately sent a communication to Gergonne in which he identified himself as the mathematician in Legendre's letter, called attention to his book, summarized its contents, and finally presented an (unsuccessful) attempt to extend his system to three dimensions.
Even with so much interest and attention to the geometry of complex numbers, it was not until Gauss published a short work on the ideas that they became popular.
Translations of both Wallis' and Wessel's papers on the imaginaries can be found in A Sourcebook of Mathematics by David Eugene Smith.
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