Савремени поглед на дисертацију Михаила Петровића

Abstract

Mihailo Petrović (1868–1943), the most prominent and influential Serbian mathematician, defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Sur les zeros et les infinis des integrales des ´equations differentielles algebriques” in Paris 1894, in front of the highly prominent defence committee: Hermite, Picard and Painleve. Since then, much has been written about Petrovic himself, his thesis and other scientific achievements, and about the influence he had on Serbian mathematics, mathematicians and society in general. However, until this very day, there has been no proper analysis of the original combinatory geometrical method he used in the thesis. The purpose of this paper is to change this fact and to clarify the origins and the importance of Petrović’s method, as well as to give some directions for continuation of his work, which has not been satisfactory even today.