INDETERMINATE PROBLEM. See ALGEBRA, Part I. Chap. VI. Encycl.
Diophantus was the first writer on indeterminate problems, which, after the publication of his work in 1621 by Bachet, employed much of the time of the most celebrated mathematicians in Europe. Afterwards such problems were neglected as useless, till the public attention was again drawn to them by Euler and la Grange. The example of such men was followed by Mr John Leslie, a very eminent and self-taught mathematician; who, in the second vol. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, has published an ingenious paper on indeterminate problems, resolving them by a new and general principle. "The doctrine of indeterminate equations (says Mr Leslie) has been seldom treated in a form equally systematic