Causality, the Coulomb field, and Newton's law of gravitation

American Journal of Physics

Volumn 70, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 411-414

  Rohrlich, F ^a  

^a SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 23044532985     PISSN: 00029505     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1119/1.1435345     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. F. Rohrlich, "Causality and the arrow of classical time," Stud. Hist. Phi-los. Mod. Phys. 31, 1-13 (2000).
2. O. L. Brill and B. Goodman, "Causality in the Coulomb gauge," Am. J. Phys. 35, 832-837 (1967).
3. J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics (Wiley, New York, 1975), 2nd ed., 3rd ed. (1999).
4. This name refers to Ludwig Lorenz (1829-1891), who developed a formulation similar to Maxwell's equations a few years after Maxwell (see footnote 5). He is to be distinguished from H. A. Lorentz, 1853-1928. It is unfortunate that in the literature the condition (3.2) is almost without exception attributed to Lorentz. See E. Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity (Thomas Nelson, London, 1951).
5. L. Lorenz, "The identity of the vibrations of light with the electric currents," Philos. Mag. XXXIV, 287 (1867).
6. This paper is an English translation of his paper in Oversigt over det K. Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Forhandl. No. 1, 26 (1867); a German translation appeared in Ann. Phys.(Leipzig) 131,243-263 (1867).
7. Note that H. A. Lorentz was only 14 years old at the time of this publication by Lorenz. Also note that a paper was just published that also points out the misattribution of this work of Lorenz to Lorentz: J. D. Jackson and L. B. Okun, "Historical roots of gauge invariance," Rev. Mod. Phys. 73, 663 (2001). I am indebted to David Jackson for this reference.
8. This is the opinion arrived at by historians of science who studied Newton's personal papers including his vast correspondence with scholars of his time. See E. McMullin, Newton on Matter and Activity (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1978).
9. W. Rindler, Essential Relativity (Springer, New York, 1977).
10. F. Rohrlich, "The logic of reduction: the case of gravitation," Found. Phys. 19, 1151-1170 (1989).
11. q∇℘ in electrostatics comes from the fact that masses attract one another while like charges repel.