A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem
fictional book mentioned in stories of Sherlock Holmes
A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem is a fictional work of mathematics by the young Professor James Moriarty, the criminal mastermind and archenemy of the detective Sherlock Holmes in the fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle. The actual title of the treatise is never given in the stories; Holmes simply refers to "a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem". The treatise is mentioned in the 1893 short story "The Final Problem", when Holmes, speaking of Professor Moriarty, states:
He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.
Moriarty was a versatile mathematician as well as a criminal mastermind. In addition to the Treatise, he wrote the book The Dynamics of an Asteroid, containing mathematics so esoteric that no one could even review it. This is a very different branch of mathematics from the Binomial Theorem, further reflecting Moriarty's impressive intellectual prowess.
Review and discussion
Doyle, in his works, never describes the contents of the treatise. This has not stopped people from speculating on what it might have contained.
“A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem” enters the record as fictional book mentioned in stories of Sherlock Holmes. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Treatise, Binomial and Theorem can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Treatise, Binomial and Theorem provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4660285. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1893.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.