Jacobi's lectures on dynamics. Delivered at the University of Königsberg in the winter semester 1842--1843 and according to the notes prepared by C. W. Borchardt. Edited by A. Clebsch. Translated from the original German by K. Balagangadharan. Translation edited by Biswarup Banerjee (Q972735)

Until recent historical research by H. Pulte on Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi's (1804-1851) Berlin lectures of 1847/1848, Jacobi's Königsberg lectures `Vorlesungen über Dynamik' (1842/1843) have been considered the most detailed and authentic source of his later views of the foundations of mechanics. They still remain, however, his probably most comprehensive account of partial differential equations in mechanics, and the role of fundamental principles such as the conservation of angular momentum and the principle of least action, which he preferred to call `Princip der kleinsten Wirkung'. The Königsberg lectures, which also discuss widely and with interesting historical side remarks influential notions such as Lagrange multipliers, Hamiltonians, (Jacobian) functional determinants, Abel's theorem, and perturbation theory (all by the same names as today) were recorded by Carl Wilhelm Borchardt (1817-1880), later temporarily editor of Crelle's journal in Berlin. The lectures were edited first by Alfred Clebsch (1833-1872) in 1866, later within Jacobi's Collected Works by Eduard Lottner (1826-1887). It is therefore laudable that the translator K. Balagangadharan and the editor B. Banerjee provide an English edition. While the translation of the text itself seems widely acceptable the lack of care in historical commentary and the general disregard for the spelling of Latin phrases are deplorable. Already in the title and in the foreword Borchardt appears in three different spellings, however not in his own. The editors do not make clear which footnotes are their own and which come from Clebsch or (mostly) Lottner. Nor does the edition provide any name or subject index.