A translation of the T. Levi-Civita paper ``Interpretazione gruppale degli integrali di un sistema canonico (Rend. Acc. Lincei, 1899, s. 3^ a, vol. VII, pp. 235--238)

DOI10.1134/S1560354712010091MaRDI QIDQ691219zbMATH OpenWikidataFDO

Authors Giuseppe Saccomandi, Raffaele Vitolo

Publication date 30 November 2012

Published in Regular and Chaotic Dynamics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2388

zbMATH Keywords

conservation laws Hamilton's equations Levi-Civita Noether's theorem point symmetries

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 19th century (01A55) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60)

Abstract: In this paper we provide a translation of a paper by T. Levi-Civita, published in 1899, about the correspondence between symmetries and conservation laws for Hamilton's equations. We discuss the results of this paper and their relationship with the more general classical results by E. Noether.

Review text

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.

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