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This is a borderline question, but I'm going to risk posing it.

Cuthbert Edmund Cullis (1875?-1955?) was a somewhat obscure British mathematician whose opus magnum was a multi-volume treatise called Matrices and Determinoids. While his notation is somewhat idiosyncratic, it was a fairly systematic exposition of most(?) of the linear algebra known by the 1920s (heavy on determinants and minors, but also including invariant factors and canonical forms, or at least things looking like them), along with lots of new results. Some of his innovations, I believe, would be of interest even to us modern people: in particular, in the first 200 pages of Volume 3A, he seems to algorithmically construct multi-resultants using multisymmetric polynomials (aka MacMahon symmetric polynomials). I have never seen this done anywhere else.

Three volumes of his treatise were published: volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3A. According to his necrologue, he left behind a (plan of?) volume 3B. Thus, I'm wondering:

Question 1. Has Volume 3A ever been digitized?

Question 2. Is the manuscript of Volume 3B available anywhere?

The reason for Question 2 is mostly curiosity, but I have a rather practical reason for Question 1: I'm interested in understanding multi-resultants elementarily and also in applying multisymmetric polynomials. The twist is that I have access to Volume 3A in hardcopy for the rest of this week, but before I leave this library I'd like to know if it's worth scanning the doorstopper (700 pages!) or someone has already done that work.

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    $\begingroup$ I had never encountered the term 'necrologue'. Spotlight's search, which I turned to to query the Apple dictionary, helpfully informs me that the word has occurred in my Internet history, on this page. $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:22
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    $\begingroup$ @LSpice: Wow, I always thought that was a word in English. (Well, almost.) $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:27

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Q1: Volume 3 part 1 (a.k.a. volume 3A) has been digitized and reissued as a paperback by Cambridge UP, see Amazon. The digital version is online in the HathiTrust digital library, but with limited "search only" access because of copyright restrictions.

With some further search I actually found a library in India that has placed the digital version online (a 54 MB download). Quite possibly not copyright compliant, but in the spirit of the National Emergency Library I guess in these difficult times a download can be justified.

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    $\begingroup$ Hmm. I assume HathiTrust's "search only" does not translate into download if you're on the right university network, does it? $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:14
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the download link! $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:28
  • $\begingroup$ As for copyright -- if it's not compliant now, it will be next year, as it was published in 1925. $\endgroup$ Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:31

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