Talk:History of Lorentz transformations

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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

This article has gone through impressive expansion, largely, it seems, thanks to a single editor (herewith a big Thank You!).

I noticed one sentence that requires improvement:

"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 the readers (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]

Thanks for the suggestion, I've changed the Poincaré section (although the error in the formulas for charge density used by Lorentz are commonly interpreted (Keswani, Miller) as the consequence, that Lorentz didn't fully understood the relativistic velocity addition law). Second, Minkowski himself referred to Lorentz, Einstein, Poincaré, Planck in 1907 in his first paper; then to Lorentz, Einstein, Poincaré in his second 1907 paper; then to Voigt, Lorentz, Einstein in his 1908 paper. Strange, isn't it? I've given the primary sources now in the article, including a secondary source by S. Walter. --D.H (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Poincare again

We have in the Poincare section, 'In July 1905 (published in January 1906)[A 19] Poincaré showed that the transformations are a consequence of the principle of least action' , but in the cited source Poincare himself seems to attribute this discovery to Lorentz, he says, 'We know how Lorentz deduced his equations from the principle of least action' . Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch. Poincare also attributed other concepts to Lorentz, such as local clocks measuring local time and the Lorentz transformations forming a group. Most historians say that Lorentz was lacking these two concepts, and Lorentz himself seems to say that he got them from Einstein. Poincare certainly did not get them from Einstein, either directly or indirectly. We have no way to resolve these contradictions. Roger (talk) 20:07, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Lorentz's equation" refer to his electrodynamic equations rather than to the Lorentz transformation. According to Schwartz (doi:10.1119/1.1976641), Poincaré was probably referring to the 1904 Encyclopedia article (pp.145–288) by Lorentz, in which he applied the principle of least action (Lagrangian variational principle) to his electron theory. --D.H (talk) 21:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]