Abstract

The important role played by the Ecole Polytechnique in the resurgence of science in France after the French Revolution, and its progress ever since, has led to much historical work on its foundation and development. Some of these studies have brought historians to the school's archives; and there chaos has awaited them, for they found the main collections of documents sorted into containers which were nominally classified by calendar year but in fact could contain materials pertaining to various other times. In addition, very many other documents were stored without classification. Thus exhaustive study of the school's history has been difficult, not to say impossible