Some determinants that should be better known

Abstract

Since it is no longer fashionable to publish per se results which depend only on algebraic manipulation, many useful and complicated results of quite general interest languish unseen hidden as lemmata in specialist papers. In particular, the theory of transcendental numbers is rich in ingenious techniques for evaluating determinants. These techniques are apparently not well known even to workers in the field of transcendental numbers, let alone to researchers on other areas where the results might find application. This note accordingly discusses a variety of interesting results on determinants and is to be viewed as an appendix to the encyclopaedic volumes of Muir (1911, 1933) which the researcher might approach in order to obtain information in this area. For reasons of motivation a brief mention is made of the context in which the determinants arise.