A scientific duo: reflections on the interplay between mathematics and physics 1809--1950 (Q1012906)

Eugene Wigner's 1960 essay, ``The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences'' [cf. Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 13, 1--14 (1960; Zbl 0102.00703)], tended to build on and support the idea that mathematics is essentially an a priori product of the human mind while physics, for example, can exist in some non-mathematical state. The author does not try to address the philosophical issues around this topic, but gives historically-based reasons for calling into question both assumptions. Several examples are given of how physical problems gave rise to new mathematics which in turn is found useful in new physics. The roots of Sturm--Liouville theory in attempting to generalize Fourier's and Poisson's theory of heat conduction is one of the examples given where a physical problem led to fundamentally new mathematics. Other examples come from Hertz's mechanics and from the theory of distributions. A similar theme appears in [\textit{I. Grattan-Guinness}, Math. Intell. 30, No. 3, 7--17 (2008; Zbl 1194.00024)].