Between geometry and the theory of substitutions: a case study concerning the twenty-seven lines on a cubic surface (Q2339146)

The close connections between group theory and geometry, which presently seem perfectly natural, have a history. A crucial role has been played by Felix Klein and his Erlangen program from 1872 but Klein had both predecessors and followers. An important follower was Sophus Lie and his school, and among immediate predecessors were Camille Jordan and Carl Friedrich Geiser. The paper concentrates on the latter two. Both studied some geometric problems with the help of substitution groups. The aim of this article is an analysis of one of them, namely the phenomenon of exactly 27 straight lines lying in each cubic surface (in the complex setting). The theorem proved in 1849 by Arthur Cayley in collaboration with George Salmon has soon become an object of intense research by, among others, Jacob Steiner and Ludwig Schläfli. Indepently of this, in 1846 Joseph Liouville published mathematical papers of Évariste Galois which were extensively studied by Jordan in his treatise on substitutions from 1870. Jordan proposed there a modus operandi in treating equations appearing in geometry, and this paper offers a detailed description of the modus, each step of which is illustrated by the phenomenon of 27 straight lines. It also gives a detailed description of Geiser's contribution.