Antoine Meyer

After receiving his doctorate, he spent an additional year in Paris studying at the Collège de France and at the Sorbonne where he came into contact with Europe's leading mathematicians.

He spent a short period at the Institut Gaggia (1834) in Brussels but was then offered a post at the military school before going on to the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1838.

Félix Thyes, who coincidentally was the first Luxembourger to publish a book in French, commented: "It is Monsieur Antoine Meyer, a mathematics professor at the University of Liège, who has the honour of being the first to rescue this tongue from the indifference and scorn in which it is immersed, creating, as it were, a new literature.

The book contains six poems, a love poem: "Uen d'Christine" (To Christine), a meditation on the romantic subject of night: "D'Nuecht" (The Night), a kind of real life painting: "Een Abléck an engem Wiertshaus zu Lëtzebuerg" (A Moment in a Luxembourg Inn), and three fables: "D'porzelains an d'ierde Schierbel" (The Shard of Porcelain and the Earthen Pot), "D'Spéngel an d'Nol" (The Pin and the Needle) and "D'Flou an de Pierdskrécher" (The Fly and the Horse Trough).

Félix Thyes commented: "We see in Mr Meyer, that noble pride of the plebeian, that instinct for liberty and often that burning concern for the poorer classes which can be found among all true poets of our times."