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I have not been able to find a copy of this paper anywhere!

B. Knaster еt C. Kuratowski: Sur quеlquеs propriétés topologiquеs dеs fonctions dеrivéеs. Rеnd. dеl Сirc. Math. di Palеrmo, 59 (1925), З82-З86.

It is by two famous mathematicians, and is referenced here.

(1) Can you help me locate this paper?

(2) In general what are some ways you find very old mathematics papers?

(3) The original paper was written in French. What are the odds that there is a translated version available?

Forever Mozart
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  • On translation: probably not, In those days you just read French.. ( read quite a few of them). Polish and Russian mathematicians wrote French or German normally, as did Dutch and many other Europeans. English only took of as a scientific language after WW2 in mainland Europe. – Henno Brandsma Apr 27 '16 at 17:14
  • Ok, I just wondered because I can usually decipher a paper in French, it's just not very fun. – Forever Mozart Apr 27 '16 at 17:18
  • You'd have to go to a library, if the papers have not been scanned. Some journals have started doing that, scanning old issues and putting them online. Rend. Del. Circa. Math. di Palermo probably has not. I'm not close to one... – Henno Brandsma Apr 27 '16 at 17:18
  • About (2): Some general advice for finding papers are given in this answer. (And, of course, there might be some other similar posts on this site.) – Martin Sleziak Apr 29 '16 at 06:02

1 Answers1

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The paper is:

Bronisław Knaster (1893-1980) and Kazimierz [Casimir] Kuratowski (1896-1980), Sur quelques propriétés topologiques des fonctions dérivées [On some topological properties of derivative functions], Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo (1) 49 (1925), 382-386. JFM 51.0208.01

I mentioned it in my answer to Examples of dense sets in the complex plane, although I didn't say much about it there. The paper is well known for using the graphs of pathological derivatives (e.g. derivatives having a dense set of non-continuity points) to easily obtain various pathological examples of connected sets in the plane.

Possibly someone somewhere over the years has translated the paper, but I have not encountered anyone saying that such a translation exists. (I've sometimes read in papers an author mentioning that they have translated such-and-such paper and would be willing to provide a copy to anyone requesting one, but not this particular paper.)

Finally, for older papers the Zbl and JFM look-up pages are very useful.

Community
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Dave L. Renfro
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  • Great! For some reason it did not show up in Springer when I searched. According to this https://books.google.com/books?id=5gPuCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA445&lpg=PA445&dq=knaster+1925+biconnected&source=bl&ots=0JIk-c64eS&sig=vzk7CUFr8xYgG48uEz9gv7MlHfI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO5KjA0K_MAhULMyYKHRxyDlsQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=knaster%201925%20biconnected&f=false it gives an example of a $G_\delta$ biconnected set in the plane. This is what I am interested in. Do you understand this example / would you be willing to give me an overview of the construction? I will post a separate question if so. – Forever Mozart Apr 27 '16 at 20:15
  • By the way, I do know of a $G_\delta$ biconnected set in the plane, by embedding the complete Erdos space. But I assume this is not the example given in the paper, as Erdos space was introduced in 1940. – Forever Mozart Apr 27 '16 at 20:17
  • I don't know this aspect of the paper and I don't read French well enough to (without a lot of difficulty) be able to discuss their construction. I don't have a copy of the paper with me, but if you don't have access to it I can look up my copy of it and make a scan copy of it tomorrow. (You'd have to send me your email address.) As for finding the paper at Springer, the title you posted is not the exact character-by-character title of the paper, and perhaps this limited the search results. – Dave L. Renfro Apr 27 '16 at 20:29