a system of national secretaries was announced in the ams bulletin in 1899: alexander mcaulay for australasia, victor schlegel for germany, joly for great britain and ireland, giuseppe peano for italy, kimura for japan, aleksandr kotelnikov for russia, f. kraft for switzerland, and arthur stafford hathaway for the usa. for france the national secretary was paul genty, an engineer with the division of ponts et chaussees, and a quaternion collaborator with charles-ange laisant, author of "methode des quaterniones" (1881).