(1) This is a subject to which very little study has been directed. The first to enunciate any proposition regarding it was Jacobi; but the solitary result which he reached received no attention from mathematicians,—certainly no fruitful attention,—during seventy years following the publication of it.Jacobi was concerned with a problem regarding the partition of a fraction with composite denominator (u1 − t1) (u2 − t2) … into other fractions whose denominators are factors of the original, where u1, u2, … are linear homogeneous functions of one and the same set of variables. The specific character of the partition was only definable by viewing the given fraction (u1−t1)−1 (u2−t2)−1…as expanded in series form, it being required that each partial fraction should be the aggregate of a certain set of terms in this series. Of course the question of the order of the terms in each factor of the original denominator had to be attended to at the outset, since the expansion for (a1x+b1y+c1z−t)−1 is not the same as for (b1y+c1z+a1x−t)−1. Now one general proposition to which Jacobi was led in the course of this investigation was that the coefficient ofx1−1x2−1x3−1…in the expansion ofy1−1u2−1u3−1…, whereis |a1b2c3…|−1, provided that in energy case the first term of uris that containing xr.
XXV.—The Generating Function of the Reciprocal of a Determinant
