Talk:History of Lorentz transformations: Difference between revisions

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Prehistory

The article says nothing about the symmetry of Lorentz transformations as it was known by English mathematicians. Relativity was rather quickly adopted due to familiarity with biquaternions and writings of William Kingdon Clifford and Alexander Macfarlane. Fundamental work by Gilbert N. Lewis and Edwin Bidwell Wilson set the Lorentz transformation into the context of synthetic geometry. Furthermore, Whittaker spelled out for everyone just how the Lorentz transformation works to express the Principle of Relativity. This article, like History of Special Relativity, neglects the developments in abstract algebra and transformation geometry that made possible relativity science. While I appreciate that numerous references and given and the viewpoint is orthodox, the article does not stand up the standards of due diligence in academic research.Rgdboer (talk) 21:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, then you should append a new section about this. --D.H (talk) 08:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The basic idea behind the Lorentz transformation can be understood as Corner Flow from hydrodynamics. When you go to the essence of the matter, the planar mapping of a Lorentz boost is an old idea, older than the linear algebra which frames the subject today.Rgdboer (talk) 20:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC) Corrected link to Corner Flow.Rgdboer (talk) 21:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

improve required of a sentence concerning Poincare 1905

I noticed one sentence that will have to be improved:

"He showed that Lorentz's application of the transformation on the equations of electrodynamics didn't fully satisfy the principle of relativity."

That suggests to reader (at least, to me!) that this was something that was not shown by Lorentz; however that's not true. Moreover, it is too far from the way it is presented in the source:

"I was only led to modify and complete them in a few points of detail. [..] These formulas differ somewhat from those which had been found by Lorentz."

I would thus rephrase it as follows:

"He modified/corrected Lorentz's derivation of the equations of electrodynamics in some details in order to fully satisfy the principle of relativity."

I'm Ok with either "modified", as Poincare phrased it, or "corrected", which better characterises it.

On a side note: I don't think that "The views of Lorentz and Einstein, together with Poincaré's four-dimensional approach, were further elaborated by [[Hermann Minkowski]" has been well sourced. The only factual and verifiable part is IMHO the second part, Poincaré's four-dimensional approach.

Regards, Harald88 (talk) 18:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]