| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"OsherD" |
| Date: |
14 Feb 2006 01:15:16 AM |
| Object: |
George Green and Causality |
From Osher Doctorow
Since I've been recently discussing Green's functions and their
relationship to Causality in my threads, I've run across some rather
remarkable things about the life of George Green.
According to www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk (University of St. Andrews,
U.K.) by J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson, October 1998,
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Green.html, and
David Graves' MAA Online book review of George Green Mathematician and
Physicist 1793-1841 by D. M. Cannell,
http://www.maa.org/reviews/ggreen.html, 2001, several features of
George Green are arguably noteworthy:
A. He wrote one of the most important mathematical works of all time,
An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of
Electricity and Magnetism, published in March 1828.
B. Like Pierre De Fermat of the earlier 1600s and Sir Isaac Newton of
the 1600s and early 1700s, Green appears to have been mild-mannered
even in giving examinations, humble to the point of not realizing the
importance of his own work, and rather uninterested in publishing and
networking in mathematics/science.
C. Not only was Green not a member of the Educational Bureaucracy or
the Political Bureaucracy, but he was not even a member of the Student
Bureaucracy at Cambridge so to speak since he was self-educated or at
most arguably tutored in mathematics but not other subjects and had to
overcome serious deficiencies in subjects outside science/mathematics
to get through Cambridge University.
D. Like Garrett Birkhoff of Harvard who pioneered in differential
equation Causation (which I call Birkhoff Causation) in hydrodynamics
around the mid-20th Century, Green published in hydrodynamics; and like
Pierre De Fermat and Sir Issac Newton, Green published in optics; and
like Maxwell who with Thomson and other republished Green's work and
thereby brought it to the public's attention, Green published in
electricity.
E. Like Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, Schrodinger, Godel, the Strausses in
Europe, Green grew up right next to a major river. His father owned a
wind corn-mill, and both the river motion and the mill motions arguably
stimulated his interests in causation.
Osher Doctorow
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| User: "OsherD" |
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| Title: Re: George Green and Causality |
14 Feb 2006 01:25:41 AM |
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From Osher Doctorow
Green can't have made very many friends at Cambridge if he adopted the
views of what circumstantially at least appears to have been his tutor
before Cambridge, John Toplis, a mathematics graduate of Queen's
College Cambridge. Toplis was highly opposed to the way mathematics
was taught at Cambridge and tried to influence others to learn French
mathematical analysis and the French works of Laplace, Lacroix,
Poisson, Biot including Laplace's Mecanique celeste which he translated
(Volume 1 anyway) into English where it was published in Nottingham in
1814.
Green also had a hard time studying at Cambridge because he worked full
time at the mill.
Osher Doctorow
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| User: "OsherD" |
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| Title: Re: George Green and Causality |
14 Feb 2006 01:40:17 AM |
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From Osher Doctorow
One of George Green's admirers in the 20th Century was Julian Schwinger
whom I discussed in my causation threads. Schwinger wrote two papers
on Green and his relationship to QFT and other parts of physics.
Schwinger and Weinberg and Dirac played major roles in QFT, and I again
for the umpteenth time recommend T. Y. Cao's 1997 volume for in depth
analysis of QFT from when Max Jammer's 1974 volume left off until 1997.
Very few textbooks using Green's functions give readers any meaningful
knowledge of Green himself.
Schwinger's papers on Green included "The Greening of quantum field
theory: George and I."
Osher Doctorow
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