A methodical mind, a stubborn, persevering and conscientious worker, a profoundly honest and just man, the son of a worker, a simple worker himself at the beginning of his career, Auguste Godeaux owed the position he occupied to his qualities alone; his life is a lesson and, something rare in such cases, he has been able to acquire perfect distinction.

In this short note, we propose to show how we could extend the ideas which form the basis of Geometrography to the tracing of plane curves by means of curvigraphs.

I am bringing together in a single report the examination of these three small papers on ruled geometry. They are of some interest, because they relate to a relatively recent branch of mathematics and use the symbolic notations of Aronhold and Clebsch.

The first work treats by two methods the complex of lines passing through a variable point of a plane α and a point of a conic of another plane β, the conic being linked to the first point by a biquadratic form. Only one of the two methods can succeed. Fr Deruyts had already studied in the Bulletin of our Académie (1892, p. 571) the complex of lines joining any point of a plane system α to any point of the corresponding line of a second plane system β reciprocal with the first. M Godeaux was inspired by this work; one can regret that his study is not more in-depth.

In the second work, the author studies a generalisation of the third-order complex that I studied, under the name of Grassmann complex, in Mathesis, 1902, page 221. He deals with the complex of lines that meet four groups of three planes given in groups of three points of a $I_{2}^{3}$. The remarkable elements of this complex would have deserved a more developed examination.

Finally, the third memoir deals with the complex of straight lines that are based on m plane curves each belonging to a sheaf. The author finds the equation of the complex, but without pushing his research further.

In any case, these three notes could appear in the Bulletin under the common title; "On some particular complexes", after the author has improved and simplified the wording.

Neuberg was an excellent teacher, extremely benevolent and of boundless devotion. I only met him at the end of his career; at that time, the reputation of our Faculty attracted a considerable number of foreign students to Liège. Three times a week Neuberg gave three one-hour lessons in succession in front of overcrowded audiences, maintaining the attention of the students, and this without apparent fatigue. Even better, he often completed his morning with an exercise session for the students studying for doctorates in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, thus filling a serious gap in the official programmes.

I met Stuyvaert in 1907; at that time, the study of the works of Fr Deruyts and his colleagues had excited me; our colleague was kind enough to take my first attempts into consideration and a regular correspondence was established between us; it lasted until the time when I left to go abroad to complete my studies. I have retained a deep gratitude for Stuyvaert's concern for me during these four years.

The homogeneous right-wing governments of the time closed the doors of the University to him (his father, a notable liberal, was in fact in the opposition), so he undertook to complete his education abroad.

The armistice of 1918 found us in a battery at Zwartegat, a small hamlet on the left bank of the Scheldt, south of Ghent; the very next day, I visited Stuyvaert, whom I found very worried about the state of health of his wife and, it seemed to me, a little embittered. Perhaps the very difficult years he had just lived through were the cause. Heart of gold, our brother had suffered deeply from seeing the principles of the most basic justice trampled underfoot for four years.

The Belgium Academy of Sciences has awarded the Deruyts prize to Dr Lucien Godeaux, for his researches in algebraic geometry.

In 1908, he had the chance to meet Maria Luthers who would become his wife in 1919 after three years of travelling abroad and four years spent on the Yser front. In his in-laws, he found the support and affection he lacked.

Each theory taught is illustrated by at least two examples, and whenever possible, these examples are taken from the practical courses. The organisation of the École Militaire provides, after each lesson, a session in the study room of the same duration (1 h. 30 m.). During this session, the professor goes into the study room and provides the students with the explanations that they ask him for. If necessary, he provokes these requests for explanations. The students have at their disposal the text of the lessons, written by the School.

We have devoted some papers to the study of involutions having only a finite number of coincidence points, belonging to an algebraic surface. We propose to make known some results concerning involutions of this nature, regular, of order two, belonging to an irregular surface.

Some special cases are known: we have studied regular involutions of order two belonging to Jacobi and Picard surfaces, which leads to generalised Kummer surfaces. Another special case was considered by Georges Humbert and is related to curves of genus three.

Prof L Godeaux has left, in the Secretary's office, the following observations for publication:

"Several of the communications made this afternoon to the Section of Geometry II-A, meeting under the presidency of Prof Godeaux, dealt with Cremona transformations. Their authors were MM Fano, Emch, Snyder, Bydzovsky. Regarding the communication of M Fano, M Severi indicated the connection between some of the points encountered by the author and unpublished research that he had previously done. Other communications on algebraic varieties were made by MM Schaake, Torroja and Sisam. A last communication on hydrodynamics was made by M Riabouchinsky. The Section decided to send its greetings to Prof F Enriques (from Rome) currently in Buenos Aires and elected M Castelnuovo as President for the Thursday session of the Section of Geometry II-A"

It is with great pleasure that we have read the little book by M Lucien Godeaux. This 'Sketch' will render the most useful service not only to the student, but to the specialist in the history of science and, more generally, to the cultivated man. The 'Sketch of a History of Mathematical Sciences in Belgium', which could also be entitled, to a certain extent, "Sketch of the History of Physical Sciences", constitutes a substantial contribution to the already considerable historical work of the eminent geometer of the University of Liège; moreover and above all, it represents the most extensive overall work devoted to the subject since the publication of Quetelet's two volumes some eighty years ago.

It is very difficult to describe in a few words Godeaux's contributions to algebraic geometry and differential projective geometry ... . He was the initiator and the main architect of the theory of involutions on algebraic surfaces. The scale of his scientific work is almost unique in the history of mathematics: some 1200 titles, ranging from original notes and memoirs in Belgian and foreign scientific journals to research monographs, including didactic and popular works and works on the history of science. Each volume of the Bulletin de la Classe des Sciences de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, between 1921 and 1975, contains at least one note by Godeaux and, among the first 44 volumes of the Bulletin de la Société Royale des Sciences de Liège, from 1932 to 1975, there are only volumes 23, 29 and 36 to which Godeaux did not contribute, an infidelity largely compensated by the five or six articles that the other volumes contain, on average.

Even if the progress of abstract algebra, topology and the theory of functions of several complex variables have profoundly transformed the face of algebraic geometry, compared to the Italian tradition which Godeaux remained steeped in, the work of our compatriot remains cited in recent publications and Godeaux surfaces (non-rational surfaces of zero arithmetic and geometric genera) are still at the center of contemporary research.

The mathematician was also interested in public affairs, in the defence of language but especially in the rights of peoples. Co-founder of the Liège section of the Ligue des Intellectuels wallons (1938), he was one of the promoters of the Association for the Intellectual and Artistic Progress of Wallonia, which he chaired from 1943. Vice-president of the Walloon National Congress held in Liège on 20 and 21 October 1945, he spoke out in favour of federalism. Summarising Walloon grievances in cultural matters, he expressed concern about the disappearance of French-speaking centres in Flanders, the progressive Flemishisation of Belgian structures and a waste of financial resources through sprinkling justified by purely linguistic concerns. In 1947, he was one of the signatories of the petition La Wallonie en alerte, denouncing the marginalisation of the Walloon country. Active in Walloon movements until the 1960s, he was, without a doubt, one of the pillars of the Association for the Intellectual and Artistic Progress of Wallonia.