Re: Who first discovered the Lorentz group?

From: Harry (harald.vanlintel_at_epfl.ch)
Date: 08/30/04 

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 11:31:06 +0200

I had overlooked the amazing claims below. Now then:

"robert j. kolker" <nowhere@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:2p67msFhatv1U1@uni-berlin.de...
>
>
> Eugene Shubert wrote:
>
> >>
> > I suspect that the Lorentz group was known much earlier. Einstein's
> > paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", was published
> > June 30, 1905.
>
> It was.

You mean that it was known much earlier than June 5, 1905?!
I doubt that very much, I wonder if you can back that up? The way Poincare
presented it looks like a new result, and I did not find an earlier
reference
I did find non-mathematical descriptions of the same in earlier papers of
Poincare like the one of 1897, in which he described relativity effects such
as "But the yard-measure, having changed its direction and having become
parallel with the motion, has in its turn undergone the deformation so that,
though the side is no longer a yard long, it will still fit it exactly, and
I shall be aware of nothing.".
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/poincare.htm

> Poincare identified the group. If Poincare had been a bit
> younger and had a bit more cheek, the aether pests would be cursing out
> Poincare's theory of relativity.

What is an "aether pest" in physics?

> Henri Poincare was one of the most
> brilliant mathematicians of the twentieth century and had most of the
> pieces that Einstein did. Poincare just did not put them together right.

Now that's interesting too! How did Poincare put pieces together wrongly? I
am not aware of any mistake he made in this respect.
He emphasized that l=1 from his own requirement that they form a group -
thus, directly from his PoR.

Harald

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