A translation of the T. Levi-Civita paper ``Interpretazione gruppale degli integrali di un sistema canonico'' (Rend. Acc. Lincei, 1899, s. \(3^{\text a}\), vol. VII, pp. 235--238) (Q691219)

This paper gives the English translation of [\textit{T. Levi-Civita}, Rom. Acc. L. Rend. (5) 8, No. 2, 235--238 (1899; JFM 30.0322.02)] and discusses the general results contained in it. The discussion focuses on the relation between the Levi-Civita paper and Emmy Noether's results on invariance from 1918 [\textit{E. Noether}, Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen, Math.-Phys. Kl. 1918, 235--257 (1918; JFM 46.0770.01)]. The motivation for this translation comes from the observation that apparently there is no reference to Noether's 1918 paper in any of the work by Levi-Civita and his collaborator U. Amaldi, an observation which is confirmed by the historical analysis of Noether's 1918 paper in [\textit{Y. Kosmann-Schwarzbach}, The Noether theorems. Invariance and conservation laws in the twentieth century. New York: Springer (2011; Zbl 1216.01011)]. The authors argue that this is hard to believe given (1) the scientific production of Levi-Civita (nearly 200 papers) and (2) the relevance of Noether's work to the work of Levi-Civita and U. Amaldi on the theory of transformation groups as applied to various problems of mathematical physics [\textit{T. Levi-Civita} and \textit{U. Amaldi}, Lezioni di meccanica razionale. Vol. 1. Cinematica. Principi e statica. Bologna: Zanichelli (1923; JFM 49.0570.01)]. The authors construct a partial explanation of this observation based on their analysis of the 1899 paper by Levi-Civita. It is argued (1) that Levi-Civita already understood the connection between Lie's theory of groups and conserved quantities in mechanics and (2) that Levi-Civita worked in the Hamiltonian formalism rather than in the Lagrangian one as used by Noether. In addition, the authors refer to the book by Y. Kosmann-Schwarzbach which gives an account of the reasons for the rather slow and selective reception of Noether's earlier work in 20th-century mathematics. The authors conclude that even though they do not have a satisfying explanation for the lack of reference to Noether's work on invariants in the work by Levi-Civita and Amaldi, the translation and discussion of Levi-Civita's 1899 paper adds new information on the history of the connections between symmetries and conservation laws.