The necessity of coming back to original mathemati-cal texts of utmost importance is nowadays well recognized. This issue of Asterisque is devoted to the presentation of Gauss' Disquisitiones Generales Circa Superficies Curvas and other texts related to it, together with a discussion by Peter Dombrowski of its contents, presentation and historical importance, written at the occasion of the bicentenary of Gauss' birthday. This would not have been made possible without the help of Michael Keane and David Trotman who translated Peter Dombrowski's original German manuscript, the autho-rization of the Braunschweigische Wissenschaftliche Gesell-schaft (who organized the bicentenary celebration), the assistance of J. P. Bourguignon, and the beautiful typing and page setting of Marie-Jose Lecuyer. We thank them, and also Prof. P. Dombrowski for having provided the scientific community with a mathematical text of a type which, in our opinion, is indispensable and was still missing.
The editors