Early history of infinite continuous groups, 1883--1898 (Q2251424)

This paper provides a detailed study of the historical development of the theory of infinite continuous groups from its inception in a paper of Lie in 1883 to the publication of Drach's doctoral thesis in 1898. The author's first aim is to describe the emergence of the notion of {\textit{infinite continuous group}} in Lie's works, and to discuss the classification problem for infinite continuous groups as tackled by Engel and Medolaghi. His second aim it to emphasize the ``enormous importance'' of infinite continuous groups in the development of PDE theory and in extending Galois theory. He hopes that the paper will clarify the historical context in which Cartan's papers on infinite continuous groups (1902--1909) were developed. It is his ``conviction that a satisfactory understanding of Cartan's contributions to this field cannot be attained without proper contextualization of his work in the long tradition dating back to Lie''.