Sturm and Liouville's work on ordinary linear differential equations. The emergence of Sturm-Liouville theory (Q799662)

This paper gives a clear and substantial history of the contributions of Sturm and Liouville on second order linear differential equations with separated linear boundary conditions. After a pertinent description of the importance and novelty of the Sturm-Liouville work and some interesting informations about the friendship of Sturm and Liouville, the author describes the roots of Sturm-Liouville theory in previous work of Taylor, the Bernoullis, d'Alembert, Fourier and Poisson. He then presents a thorough analysis of the various memoirs of Sturm and Liouville. The paper ends with some comments on the subsequent development of the Sturm- Liouville theory, an appendix on the convergence of the Fourier series for a third order Sturm-Liouville problem, a detailed bibliography and a chronological summary. One shall notice that the paper is based not only upon the relevant published memoirs but also on unpublished handwritten memoirs of Liouville kept in the Archives of the Academy of Science in Paris.