Christoph Jetzler und Leonhard Euler (Q1429245)

The paper depicts how a Swiss furrier and amateur mathematician Christoph Jetzler from Schaffhausen came to Berlin in spring 1763, only to ask a favour of Leonhard Euler, whom he had never met before. He wanted to copy the manuscript of Euler's Institutiones ``Calculi Integralis'', which had not appeared in print yet. The request was granted, and a copy of about 1000 pages was completed in the autumn of the same year. Euler mentioned this in a letter to Christian Goldbach in December 1763; the paper starts with an excerpt from this letter. Then a pasage follows from Jetzler's biography, written by Rudolf Wolf in 1859. Also some excerpts from Jetzler's letters to his mother, written in Berlin (April and July 1763), are given. But the main part of the paper is the republication of a letter by Euler to Jetzler in May 1765. The paper is illustrated with the portraits of Jetzler (engraving by H. Lips) and Euler (a copy of E. Handmann's painting, made by Jetzler and not published before), and with an example page of Jetzler's copy from the Euler's manuscript; the whole copy is now in the Schaffhausen City Library.