Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences - PIMS

During the last three years of his life Heinrich Hertz wrote a treatise
on mechanics which was to be the last attempt to supply a satisfactory
foundation to classical mechanics. It was published posthumously in
1894, the year of his death.
In the talk I shall in particular analyze the connection between the
physical content of the book and its mathematical form. Hertz was the
first physicist who based mechanics on the new Riemannian differential
geometry. I shall explain this formalism and its physical background
and I shall argue that Hertz's image of matter was created in order to
facilitate the deduction of the fundamental line element. This argument
is based on a study of the manuscripts Hertz wrote while working on his
mechanics. Although Hertz's new foundation of physics was soon made
obsolete by the advent of the theory of relativity, his aproach had
lasting influence on the presentation of mechanics, on Hilbert's
foundational work and on natural philosophy.

10th Anniversary Speaker Series 2007