The unpublished papers of Joseph Liouville in Bordeaux

The unpublished scientific papers of Joseph Liouville located in the Institut de France in Paris have been investigated by several scholars in recent years, and it has been pointed out on a number of occasions that the Paris collection is incomplete. The present article analyzes the history of Liouville's unpublished papers and gives an initial survey of additional papers discovered in Bordeaux in 1983–1984. Besides the material originating from Liouville, the Bordeaux collection also contains many manuscripts of Charles-Francois Sturm which had long been searched for and had therefore been assumed by most to have been lost. Furthermore, there are documents connected with the transmission and editing of the unpublished papers of Evariste Galois, which were also once in Liouville's possession.