In a review of a book by Ferdinand Gonseth in the Spring-Summer 2006 (Volume XI, Issue 1) of the HOPOS Newsletter it is said that Gonseth was the 


"successor on Jerome's (sic) Franel's chair for Mathematics in French language at the ETH"


1) Was this a chair that Franel held or was it a chair Franel endowed? If the former, does the chair have a name?


2) What is the nature of a chair "for Mathematics in the French language"? Is it a history of French mathematics chair or is it a chair for a mathematician that writes in French?


Thanks for any insight.


Cheers, Scott



Jerome Franel's Chair at ETH
Franel was a number theorist who gave introductory calculus lectures in French
at the ETH. Maybe the ETH offered courses in different languages, because of its location in a multilingual country. Does anybody know? Anyway, for a little more information, see [this excerpt](http://books.google.com/books?id=OuHrR_6WEKsC&lpg=PA41&ots=Dc_XS3I3yz&dq=%22jerome%20franel%22%20eth&pg=PA41#v=onepage&q=%22jerome%20franel%22%20eth&f=false) from Jerry Alexanderson's *The Random Walks of George Polya.*


[Added later] At [this site](http://www.ethistory.ethz.ch/materialien/professoren/listen/alle_profs) there is a list of all professors in the history of the ETH, between 1855 and 2005. Franel is not the only professor for "Mathematik in französischer Sprache" -- there were some before Franel, and others in more recent times were Beno Eckmann and Armand Borel. There were also professors of geometry, mechanics and statistics "in französischer Sprache". So, Franel was not at all special in this respect, which strengthens my suspicion that the ETH made a point of offering courses in French.


