He failed to include his name in the title page. The title was “Essay on the Geometrical Interpretation of Imaginary Quantities”. One copy ended up in the hands of the mathematician A. Legendre (1752-1833) who in turn mentioned it in a letter to Francois Francais, a professor of mathematics. When Francais died, he inherited his papers to his brother Jaques who was a professor of military art and a mathematician. He found Legendre’s letter describing Argand’s mathematical results, but Legendre failed to mention Argand. Jaques published an article in 1813 in the Annales de Math´emathiques giving the basics of complex numbers. In the last paragraph of the paper, Jaques acknowledged his debt to Legendre’s letter, and urged the unknown author to come forward. Argand learned of this and his reply appeared in the next issue of the journal.