Tag / Riemann

by David D. Nolte

A Short History of Hyperspace

Hyperspace by any other name would sound as sweet, conjuring to the mind’s eye images of hypercubes and tesseracts, manifolds and wormholes, Klein bottles and Calabi Yau quintics.  Forget the dimension of time—that may be the most mysterious of all—but consider the extra spatial dimensions that challenge the mind and open the door to dreams of going beyond the bounds of today’s physics.

The geometry of n dimensions studies reality; no one doubts that. Bodies in hyperspace are subject to precise definition, just like bodies in ordinary space; and while we cannot draw pictures of them, we can imagine and study them.

(Poincare 1895)

Here is a short history of hyperspace.  It begins with advances by Möbius and Liouville and Jacobi who never truly realized what they had invented, until Cayley and Grassmann and Riemann made it explicit.  They opened Pandora’s box, and multiple dimensions burst upon the world never to be put back again, giving us today the manifolds of string theory and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

August Möbius (1827)

Although he is most famous for the single-surface strip that bears his name, one of the early contributions of August Möbius was the idea of barycentric coordinates [1] , for instance using three coordinates to express the locations of points in a two-dimensional simplex—the triangle. Barycentric coordinates are used routinely today in metallurgy to describe the alloy composition in ternary alloys.

August Möbius (1790 – 1868). Image.

Möbius’ work was one of the first to hint that tuples of numbers could stand in for higher dimensional space, and they were an early example of homogeneous coordinates that could be used for higher-dimensional representations. However, he was too early to use any language of multidimensional geometry.

Carl Jacobi (1834)

Carl Jacobi was a master at manipulating multiple variables, leading to his development of the theory of matrices. In this context, he came to study (n-1)-fold integrals over multiple continuous-valued variables. From our modern viewpoint, he was evaluating surface integrals of hyperspheres.

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804 – 1851)

In 1834, Jacobi found explicit solutions to these integrals and published them in a paper with the imposing title “De binis quibuslibet functionibus homogeneis secundi ordinis per substitutiones lineares in alias binas transformandis, quae solis quadratis variabilium constant; una cum variis theorematis de transformatione et determinatione integralium multiplicium” [2]. The resulting (n-1)-fold integrals are

when the space dimension is even or odd, respectively. These are the surface areas of the manifolds called (n-1)-spheres in n-dimensional space. For instance, the 2-sphere is the ordinary surface 4πr2 of a sphere on our 3D space.

Despite the fact that we recognize these as surface areas of hyperspheres, Jacobi used no geometric language in his paper. He was still too early, and mathematicians had not yet woken up to the analogy of extending spatial dimensions beyond 3D.

Joseph Liouville (1838)

Joseph Liouville’s name is attached to a theorem that lies at the core of mechanical systems—Liouville’s Theorem that proves that volumes in high-dimensional phase space are incompressible. Surprisingly, Liouville had no conception of high dimensional space, to say nothing of abstract phase space. The story of the convoluted path that led Liouville’s name to be attached to his theorem is told in Chapter 6, “The Tangled Tale of Phase Space”, in Galileo Unbound (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Joseph Liouville (1809 – 1882)

Nonetheless, Liouville did publish a pure-mathematics paper in 1838 in Crelle’s Journal [3] that identified an invariant quantity that stayed constant during the differential change of multiple variables when certain criteria were satisfied. It was only later that Jacobi, as he was developing a new mechanical theory based on William R. Hamilton’s work, realized that the criteria needed for Liouville’s invariant quantity to hold were satisfied by conservative mechanical systems. Even then, neither Liouville nor Jacobi used the language of multidimensional geometry, but that was about to change in a quick succession of papers and books by three mathematicians who, unknown to each other, were all thinking along the same lines.

Facsimile of Liouville’s 1838 paper on invariants

Arthur Cayley (1843)

Arthur Cayley was the first to take the bold step to call the emerging geometry of multiple variables to be actual space. His seminal paper “Chapters in the Analytic Theory of n-Dimensions” was published in 1843 in the Philosophical Magazine [4]. Here, for the first time, Cayley recognized that the domain of multiple variables behaved identically to multidimensional space. He used little of the language of geometry in the paper, which was mostly analysis rather than geometry, but his bold declaration for spaces of n-dimensions opened the door to a changing mindset that would soon sweep through geometric reasoning.

Arthur Cayley (1821 – 1895). Image

Hermann Grassmann (1844)

Grassmann’s life story, although not overly tragic, was beset by lifelong setbacks and frustrations. He was a mathematician literally 30 years ahead of his time, but because he was merely a high-school teacher, no-one took his ideas seriously.

Somehow, in nearly a complete vacuum, disconnected from the professional mathematicians of his day, he devised an entirely new type of algebra that allowed geometric objects to have orientation. These could be combined in numerous different ways obeying numerous different laws. The simplest elements were just numbers, but these could be extended to arbitrary complexity with arbitrary number of elements. He called his theory a theory of “Extension”, and he self-published a thick and difficult tome that contained all of his ideas [5]. He tried to enlist Möbius to help disseminate his ideas, but even Möbius could not recognize what Grassmann had achieved.

In fact, what Grassmann did achieve was vector algebra of arbitrarily high dimension. Perhaps more impressive for the time is that he actually recognized what he was dealing with. He did not know of Cayley’s work, but independently of Cayley he used geometric language for the first time describing geometric objects in high dimensional spaces. He said, “since this method of formation is theoretically applicable without restriction, I can define systems of arbitrarily high level by this method… geometry goes no further, but abstract science knows no limits.” [6]

Grassman was convinced that he had discovered something astonishing and new, which he had, but no one understood him. After years trying to get mathematicians to listen, he finally gave up, left mathematics behind, and actually achieved some fame within his lifetime in the field of linguistics. There is even a law of diachronic linguistics named after him. For the story of Grassmann’s struggles, see the blog on Grassmann and his Wedge Product .

Hermann Grassmann (1809 – 1877).

Julius Plücker (1846)

Projective geometry sounds like it ought to be a simple topic, like the projective property of perspective art as parallel lines draw together and touch at the vanishing point on the horizon of a painting. But it is far more complex than that, and it provided a separate gateway into the geometry of high dimensions.

A hint of its power comes from homogeneous coordinates of the plane. These are used to find where a point in three dimensions intersects a plane (like the plane of an artist’s canvas). Although the point on the plane is in two dimensions, it take three homogeneous coordinates to locate it. By extension, if a point is located in three dimensions, then it has four homogeneous coordinates, as if the three dimensional point were a projection onto 3D from a 4D space.

These ideas were pursued by Julius Plücker as he extended projective geometry from the work of earlier mathematicians such as Desargues and Möbius. For instance, the barycentric coordinates of Möbius are a form of homogeneous coordinates. What Plücker discovered is that space does not need to be defined by a dense set of points, but a dense set of lines can be used just as well. The set of lines is represented as a four-dimensional manifold. Plücker reported his findings in a book in 1846 [7] and expanded on the concepts of multidimensional spaces published in 1868 [8].

Julius Plücker (1801 – 1868).

Ludwig Schläfli (1851)

After Plücker, ideas of multidimensional analysis became more common, and Ludwig Schläfli (1814 – 1895), a professor at the University of Berne in Switzerland, was one of the first to fully explore analytic geometry in higher dimensions. He described multidimsnional points that were located on hyperplanes, and he calculated the angles between intersecting hyperplanes [9]. He also investigated high-dimensional polytopes, from which are derived our modern “Schläfli notation“. However, Schläffli used his own terminology for these objects, emphasizing analytic properties without using the ordinary language of high-dimensional geometry.

Some of the polytopes studied by Schläfli.

Bernhard Riemann (1854)

The person most responsible for the shift in the mindset that finally accepted the geometry of high-dimensional spaces was Bernhard Riemann. In 1854 at the university in Göttingen he presented his habilitation talk “Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen” (Over the hypotheses on which geometry is founded). A habilitation in Germany was an examination that qualified an academic to be able to advise their own students (somewhat like attaining tenure in US universities).

The habilitation candidate would suggest three topics, and it was usual for the first or second to be picked. Riemann’s three topics were: trigonometric properties of functions (he was the first to rigorously prove the convergence properties of Fourier series), aspects of electromagnetic theory, and a throw-away topic that he added at the last minute on the foundations of geometry (on which he had not actually done any serious work). Gauss was his faculty advisor and picked the third topic. Riemann had to develop the topic in a very short time period, starting from scratch. The effort exhausted him mentally and emotionally, and he had to withdraw temporarily from the university to regain his strength. After returning around Easter, he worked furiously for seven weeks to develop a first draft and then asked Gauss to set the examination date. Gauss initially thought to postpone to the Fall semester, but then at the last minute scheduled the talk for the next day. (For the story of Riemann and Gauss, see Chapter 4 “Geometry on my Mind” in the book Galileo Unbound (Oxford, 2018)).

Riemann gave his lecture on 10 June 1854, and it was a masterpiece. He stripped away all the old notions of space and dimensions and imbued geometry with a metric structure that was fundamentally attached to coordinate transformations. He also showed how any set of coordinates could describe space of any dimension, and he generalized ideas of space to include virtually any ordered set of measurables, whether it was of temperature or color or sound or anything else. Most importantly, his new system made explicit what those before him had alluded to: Jacobi, Grassmann, Plücker and Schläfli. Ideas of Riemannian geometry began to percolate through the mathematics world, expanding into common use after Richard Dedekind edited and published Riemann’s habilitation lecture in 1868 [10].

Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866). Image.

George Cantor and Dimension Theory (1878)

In discussions of multidimensional spaces, it is important to step back and ask what is dimension? This question is not as easy to answer as it may seem. In fact, in 1878, George Cantor proved that there is a one-to-one mapping of the plane to the line, making it seem that lines and planes are somehow the same. He was so astonished at his own results that he wrote in a letter to his friend Richard Dedekind “I see it, but I don’t believe it!”. A few decades later, Peano and Hilbert showed how to create area-filling curves so that a single continuous curve can approach any point in the plane arbitrarily closely, again casting shadows of doubt on the robustness of dimension. These questions of dimensionality would not be put to rest until the work by Karl Menger around 1926 when he provided a rigorous definition of topological dimension (see the Blog on the History of Fractals).

Area-filling curves by Peano and Hilbert.

Hermann Minkowski and Spacetime (1908)

Most of the earlier work on multidimensional spaces were mathematical and geometric rather than physical. One of the first examples of physical hyperspace is the spacetime of Hermann Minkowski. Although Einstein and Poincaré had noted how space and time were coupled by the Lorentz equations, they did not take the bold step of recognizing space and time as parts of a single manifold. This step was taken in 1908 [11] by Hermann Minkowski who claimed

“Gentlemen! The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you … They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”Herman Minkowski (1908)

For the story of Einstein and Minkowski, see the Blog on Minkowski’s Spacetime: The Theory that Einstein Overlooked.

Facsimile of Minkowski’s 1908 publication on spacetime.

Felix Hausdorff and Fractals (1918)

No story of multiple “integer” dimensions can be complete without mentioning the existence of “fractional” dimensions, also known as fractals. The individual who is most responsible for the concepts and mathematics of fractional dimensions was Felix Hausdorff. Before being compelled to commit suicide by being jewish in Nazi Germany, he was a leading light in the intellectual life of Leipzig, Germany. By day he was a brilliant mathematician, by night he was the author Paul Mongré writing poetry and plays.

In 1918, as the war was ending, he wrote a small book “Dimension and Outer Measure” that established ways to construct sets whose measured dimensions were fractions rather than integers [12]. Benoit Mandelbrot would later popularize these sets as “fractals” in the 1980’s. For the background on a history of fractals, see the Blog A Short History of Fractals.

Felix Hausdorff (1868 – 1942)
Example of a fractal set with embedding dimension DE = 2, topological dimension DT = 1, and fractal dimension DH = 1.585.


The Fifth Dimension of Theodore Kaluza (1921) and Oskar Klein (1926)

The first theoretical steps to develop a theory of a physical hyperspace (in contrast to merely a geometric hyperspace) were taken by Theodore Kaluza at the University of Königsberg in Prussia. He added an additional spatial dimension to Minkowski spacetime as an attempt to unify the forces of gravity with the forces of electromagnetism. Kaluza’s paper was communicated to the journal of the Prussian Academy of Science in 1921 through Einstein who saw the unification principles as a parallel of some of his own attempts [13]. However, Kaluza’s theory was fully classical and did not include the new quantum theory that was developing at that time in the hands of Heisenberg, Bohr and Born.

Oskar Klein was a Swedish physicist who was in the “second wave” of quantum physicists having studied under Bohr. Unaware of Kaluza’s work, Klein developed a quantum theory of a five-dimensional spacetime [14]. For the theory to be self-consistent, it was necessary to roll up the extra dimension into a tight cylinder. This is like a strand a spaghetti—looking at it from far away it looks like a one-dimensional string, but an ant crawling on the spaghetti can move in two dimensions—along the long direction, or looping around it in the short direction called a compact dimension. Klein’s theory was an early attempt at what would later be called string theory. For the historical background on Kaluza and Klein, see the Blog on Oskar Klein.

The wave equations of Klein-Gordon, Schrödinger and Dirac.

John Campbell (1931): Hyperspace in Science Fiction

Art has a long history of shadowing the sciences, and the math and science of hyperspace was no exception. One of the first mentions of hyperspace in science fiction was in the story “Islands in Space’, by John Campbell [15], published in the Amazing Stories quarterly in 1931, where it was used as an extraordinary means of space travel.

In 1951, Isaac Asimov made travel through hyperspace the transportation network that connected the galaxy in his Foundation Trilogy [16].

Testez-vous : Isaac Asimov avait-il (entièrement) raison ? - Sciences et Avenir
Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992)

John von Neumann and Hilbert Space (1932)

Quantum mechanics had developed rapidly through the 1920’s, but by the early 1930’s it was in need of an overhaul, having outstripped rigorous mathematical underpinnings. These underpinnings were provided by John von Neumann in his 1932 book on quantum theory [17]. This is the book that cemented the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, with projection measurements and wave function collapse, while also establishing the formalism of Hilbert space.

Hilbert space is an infinite dimensional vector space of orthogonal eigenfunctions into which any quantum wave function can be decomposed. The physicists of today work and sleep in Hilbert space as their natural environment, often losing sight of its infinite dimensions that don’t seem to bother anyone. Hilbert space is more than a mere geometrical space, but less than a full physical space (like five-dimensional spacetime). Few realize that what is so often ascribed to Hilbert was actually formalized by von Neumann, among his many other accomplishments like stored-program computers and game theory.

John von Neumann (1903 – 1957). Image Credits.

Einstein-Rosen Bridge (1935)

One of the strangest entities inhabiting the theory of spacetime is the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. It is space folded back on itself in a way that punches a short-cut through spacetime. Einstein, working with his collaborator Nathan Rosen at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, published a paper in 1935 that attempted to solve two problems [18]. The first problem was the Schwarzschild singularity at a radius r = 2M/c2 known as the Schwarzschild radius or the Event Horizon. Einstein had a distaste for such singularities in physical theory and viewed them as a problem. The second problem was how to apply the theory of general relativity (GR) to point masses like an electron. Again, the GR solution to an electron blows up at the location of the particle at r = 0.

Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Image.

To eliminate both problems, Einstein and Rosen (ER) began with the Schwarzschild metric in its usual form

where it is easy to see that it “blows up” when r = 2M/c2 as well as at r = 0. ER realized that they could write a new form that bypasses the singularities using the simple coordinate substitution

to yield the “wormhole” metric

It is easy to see that as the new variable u goes from -inf to +inf that this expression never blows up. The reason is simple—it removes the 1/r singularity by replacing it with 1/(r + ε). Such tricks are used routinely today in computational physics to keep computer calculations from getting too large—avoiding the divide-by-zero problem. It is also known as a form of regularization in machine learning applications. But in the hands of Einstein, this simple “bypass” is not just math, it can provide a physical solution.

It is hard to imagine that an article published in the Physical Review, especially one written about a simple variable substitution, would appear on the front page of the New York Times, even appearing “above the fold”, but such was Einstein’s fame this is exactly the response when he and Rosen published their paper. The reason for the interest was because of the interpretation of the new equation—when visualized geometrically, it was like a funnel between two separated Minkowski spaces—in other words, what was named a “wormhole” by John Wheeler in 1957. Even back in 1935, there was some sense that this new property of space might allow untold possibilities, perhaps even a form of travel through such a short cut.

As it turns out, the ER wormhole is not stable—it collapses on itself in an incredibly short time so that not even photons can get through it in time. More recent work on wormholes have shown that it can be stabilized by negative energy density, but ordinary matter cannot have negative energy density. On the other hand, the Casimir effect might have a type of negative energy density, which raises some interesting questions about quantum mechanics and the ER bridge.

Edward Witten’s 10+1 Dimensions (1995)

A history of hyperspace would not be complete without a mention of string theory and Edward Witten’s unification of the variously different 10-dimensional string theories into 10- or 11-dimensional M-theory. At a string theory conference at USC in 1995 he pointed out that the 5 different string theories of the day were all related through dualities. This observation launched the second superstring revolution that continues today. In this theory, 6 extra spatial dimensions are wrapped up into complex manifolds such as the Calabi-Yau manifold.

Two-dimensional slice of a six-dimensional Calabi-Yau quintic manifold.

Prospects

There is definitely something wrong with our three-plus-one dimensions of spacetime. We claim that we have achieved the pinnacle of fundamental physics with what is called the Standard Model and the Higgs boson, but dark energy and dark matter loom as giant white elephants in the room. They are giant, gaping, embarrassing and currently unsolved. By some estimates, the fraction of the energy density of the universe comprised of ordinary matter is only 5%. The other 95% is in some form unknown to physics. How can physicists claim to know anything if 95% of everything is in some unknown form?

The answer, perhaps to be uncovered sometime in this century, may be the role of extra dimensions in physical phenomena—probably not in every-day phenomena, and maybe not even in high-energy particles—but in the grand expanse of the cosmos.

By David D. Nolte, Feb. 8, 2023

Bibliography:

M. Kaku, R. O’Keefe, Hyperspace: A scientific odyssey through parallel universes, time warps, and the tenth dimension.  (Oxford University Press, New York, 1994).

A. N. Kolmogorov, A. P. Yushkevich, Mathematics of the 19th century: Geometry, analytic function theory.  (Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel ; 1996).

References:

[1] F. Möbius, in Möbius, F. Gesammelte Werke,, D. M. Saendig, Ed. (oHG, Wiesbaden, Germany, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 36-49.

[2] Carl Jacobi, “De binis quibuslibet functionibus homogeneis secundi ordinis per substitutiones lineares in alias binas transformandis, quae solis quadratis variabilium constant; una cum variis theorematis de transformatione et determinatione integralium multiplicium” (1834)

[3] J. Liouville, Note sur la théorie de la variation des constantes arbitraires. Liouville Journal 3, 342-349 (1838).

[4] A. Cayley, Chapters in the analytical geometry of n dimensions. Collected Mathematical Papers 1, 317-326, 119-127 (1843).

[5] H. Grassmann, Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre.  (Wiegand, Leipzig, 1844).

[6] H. Grassmann quoted in D. D. Nolte, Galileo Unbound (Oxford University Press, 2018) pg. 105

[7] J. Plücker, System der Geometrie des Raumes in Neuer Analytischer Behandlungsweise, Insbesondere de Flächen Sweiter Ordnung und Klasse Enthaltend.  (Düsseldorf, 1846).

[8] J. Plücker, On a New Geometry of Space (1868).

[9] L. Schläfli, J. H. Graf, Theorie der vielfachen Kontinuität. Neue Denkschriften der Allgemeinen Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für die Gesammten Naturwissenschaften 38. ([s.n.], Zürich, 1901).

[10] B. Riemann, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen, Habilitationsvortrag. Göttinger Abhandlung 13,  (1854).

[11] Minkowski, H. (1909). “Raum und Zeit.” Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematikier-Vereinigung: 75-88.

[12] Hausdorff, F.(1919).“Dimension und ausseres Mass,”Mathematische Annalen, 79: 157–79.

[13] Kaluza, Theodor (1921). “Zum Unitätsproblem in der Physik”. Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin. (Math. Phys.): 966–972

[14] Klein, O. (1926). “Quantentheorie und fünfdimensionale Relativitätstheorie“. Zeitschrift für Physik. 37 (12): 895

[15] John W. Campbell, Jr. “Islands of Space“, Amazing Stories Quarterly (1931)

[16] Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Gnome Press, 1951)

[17] J. von Neumann, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.  (Princeton University Press, ed. 1996, 1932).

[18] A. Einstein and N. Rosen, “The Particle Problem in the General Theory of Relativity,” Phys. Rev. 48(73) (1935).

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by David D. Nolte

Physicists in Revolution: Arago, Riemann, Jacobi and Doppler

The opening episode of Victoria on Masterpiece Theatre (PBS) this season finds the queen confronting widespread unrest among her subjects who are pressing for more freedoms and more say in government. Louis-Phillipe, former King of France, has been deposed in the February Revolution of 1848 in Paris and his presence at the Royal Palace does not help the situation.

In 1848 a wave of spontaneous revolution swept across Europe.  It was not a single revolution of many parts, but many separate revolutions with similar goals.  Two essential disruptions of life occurred in the early 1800’s.  The first was the partitioning of Europe at the Congress of Vienna from 1814 to 1815, presided over by Prince Metternich of Austria, that had carved up Napoleon’s conquests and sought to establish a stable order based on the old ideal of absolute monarchy.  In the process, nationalities were separated or suppressed.  The second was the industrialization of Europe in the early 1800’s that created economic upheaval, with masses of working poor fleeing effective serfdom in the fields and flocking to the cities.  Wages fell, food became scarce, legions of the poor and starving bloomed.  Because of these influences, European society had become unstable, supercooled beyond a phase transition and waiting for a seed or catalyst to crystalize the continent into a new state of matter. 

When the wave came, physicists across Europe were caught in the upheaval.  Some were caught up in the fervor and turned their attention to national service, some lost their standing and their positions during the inevitable reactionary backlash, others got the opportunities of their careers.  It was difficult for anyone to be untouched by the 1848 revolutions, and physicist were no exception.

The Spontaneous Fire of Revolution

The extraodinary wave of revolution was sparked by a small rebellion in Sicily in January 1848 that sought to overturn the ruling Bourbons.  It was a small rebellion of little direct consequence to Europe, but it succeeded in establishing a liberal democracy in an independent state that stood as a symbol of what could be achieved by a determined populace.  The people of Paris took notice, and in the sudden and unanticipated February Revolution, the French constitutional monarchy under Louis-Phillipe was overthrown in a few days and replaced by the French Second Republic.  The shock of Louis-Phillipe’s fall reverberated across Europe, feared by those in power and welcomed by those who sought a new world order.  Nationalism, liberalism, socialism and communism were on the rise, and the opportunity to change the world seemed to have arrived.  The Five Days of Milan in Italy, the March Revolution of the German states, the Polish rebellion against Prussia, and the Young Irelander Rebellion in Ireland were all consequences of the unstable conditions and the unprecidented opportunities for the people to enact change.  None of these uprisings were coordinated by any central group.  It was a spontaneous consequence of similar preconditions that existed across nearly all the states of Europe.

Arago and the February Revolution in Paris

The French were no newcomers to street rebellions.  Paris had a history of armed conflict between citizens manning barricades and the superior forces of the powers at be.  The unforgettable scene in Les Misérables of Marius at the barricade and Jean Valjean’s rescue through the sewers of Paris was based on the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris.  Yet this event was merely an echo of the much larger rebellion of 1830 that had toppled the unpopular monarchy of Charles X, followed by the ascension of the Bourgeois Monarch Louis Phillipe at the start of the July Monarchy.  Eighteen years later, Louis Phillipe was still on the throne and the masses were ready again for a change.  Alexis de Tocqueville saw the change coming and remarked, “We are sleeping together in a volcano. … A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”  The storm would sweep up a generation of participants, including the French physicist Francois Arago (1786 – 1853).

Lamartine in front of the Town Hall of Paris on 25 February 1848 (Image by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux in public domain).

Arago is one of the under-appreciated French physicists of the 1800’s.  This may be because so many of his peers have become icons in the history of physics: Fourier, Fresnel, Poisson, Laplace, Malus, Biot and Foucault.  The one place where his name appears—the Spot of Arago—was not exclusively his discovery, but rather was an experimental demonstration of an effect derived by Poisson using Fresnel’s new theory of diffraction.  Poisson derived the phenomenon as a means to show the absurdity of Fresnel’s undulatory theory of light, but Arago’s experimental demonstration turned the tables on Poisson and the emissionists (followers of Newton’s particulate theory of light).  Yet Arago played a role behind the scenes as a supporter and motivator of some of the most important discoveries in optics.  In particular, it was Arago’s encouragement and support of the (at that time) unknown Fresnel, that helped establish the Fresnel theory of diffraction and the wave nature of light.  Together, Arago and Fresnel established the transverse nature of the light wave, and Arago is also the little-known discoverer of optical rotation.  As a young scientist, he attempted to measure the drift of the ether, which was a null experiment that foreshadowed the epochal experiments of Michelson and Morley 80 years later.  In his later years, Arago proposed the methodology for measuring the speed of light in both stationary and moving materials, which became the basis for the important measurements of the speed of light by Fizeau and Foucault (who also attempted to measure ether drift).

In addition to his duties as the director of the National Observatory and as the perpetual secretary of the Academie des Sciences (replacing Fourier), he entered politics in 1830 when he was elected as a member of the chamber of deputies.  At the fall of Louis-Phillipe in the February Revolution of 1848, he was appointed as a member of the steering committee of the newly formed government of the French Second Republic, and he was named head of the Marine and Colonies as well as the head of the Department of War.  Although he was a staunch republican and supporter of the people, his position put him in direct conflict with the later stages of the revolutions of 1848. 

The population of Paris became disenchanted with the conservative trends in the Second Republic.  In June of 1848 barricades were again erected in the streets of Paris, this time in opposition to the Republic.  Forces were drawn up on both sides, although many of the Republican forces defected to the insurgents, and attempts were made to mediate the conflict.  At the barricade on the rue Soufflot near the Pantheon, Arago himself approached the barricades to implore defenders to disperse.  It is a measure of the respect Arago held with the people when they replied, “Monsieur Arago, we are full of respect for you, but you have no right to reproach us.  You have never been hungry.  You don’t know what poverty is.” [1] When Arago finally withdrew, he feared that death and carnage were inevitable.  They came at noon on June 23 when the barricade at Porte Saint-Denis was attacked by the National Guards.  This started a general onslaught of all the barricades by Republican forces that left 1,500 workers dead in the streets and more than 11,000 arrested.  Arago resigned from the steering committee on June 24, although he continued to work in the government until the coup d’Etat by Louis Napolean, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1852 when he became Napoleon III, Emperor of the Second French Empire. Louis Napoleon demanded that all government workers take an oath of allegiance to him, but Arago refused.  Yet such was the respect that Arago commanded that Louis Napoleon let him continue unmolested as the astronomer of the Bureau des Longitudes.

Riemann and Jacobi and the March Revolution in Berlin

The February Revolution of Paris was followed a month later by the March Revolutions of the German States.  The center of the German-speaking world at that time was Vienna, and a demonstration by students broke out in Vienna on March 13. Emperor Ferdinand, following the advice of Metternich, called out the army who fired on the crowd, killing several protestors.  Throngs rallied to the protest and arms were distributed, readying for a fight.  Rather than risk unreserved bloodshed, the emperor dismissed Metternich who went into exile to London (following closely the footsteps of the French Louis-Phillipe).  Within the week, the revolutionary fervor had spread to Berlin where a student uprising marched on the royal palace of King Frederick Wilhelm IV on March 18.  They were met by 20,000 troops. 

The March 1848 revolution in Berlin (Image in the public domain).

Not all university students were liberals and revolutionaries, and there were numerous student groups that formed to support the King.  One of the students in one of these loyalist groups was a shy mathematician who joined a loyalist student militia to protect the King.  Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866) had come to the University of Berlin after spending a short time in the Mathematics department at the University in Göttingen.  Despite the presence of Gauss there, the mathematics department was not considered strong (this would change dramatically in about 50 years when Göttingen became the center of German mathematics with the arrival of Felix Klein, Karl Schwarzschild and Hermann Minkowski).  At Berlin, Riemann attended lectures by Steiner, Jacobi, Dirichlet and Eisenstein. 

On the night of the uprising, a nervous Riemann found himself among a group of students, few more than 20 years old, guarding the quarters of the King, not knowing what would unfold.  They spent a sleepless night that dawned on the chaos and carnage at the barricades at Alexander Platz with hundreds of citizens dead.  King Wilhelm was caught off guard by the events, and he assured the citizens that he would reorganize the government and yield to the demonstrator’s demands for parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press.  Two days later the king attended a mass funeral for the fallen, attended by his generals and ministers who wore the german revolutionary tricolor of black, red and gold.  This ploy worked, and the unrest in Berlin died away before the king was forced to abdicate.  This must have relieved Riemann immensely, because this entire episode was entirely outside his usual meek and mild character.  Yet the character of all the unrelated 1848 revolutions had one thing in common: a sharp division among the populace between the liberals and the conservatives.  As Riemann had elected to join with the loyalists, one of his professors picked the other side.

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804 – 1851) had been born in Potsdam and had obtained his first faculty position at the University of Königsberg where he was soon ranked among the top mathematicians in Europe.  However, in his early thirties he was stricken with diabetes, and the harsh winters of Königsberg became to difficult to bear.  He returned to the milder climate of Berlin to a faculty position at the university when the wave of revolution swept over the city.  Jacobi was a liberal thinker and was caught up in the movement, attending meetings at the Constitution Club.  Once the danger to Wilhelm IV had passed, the reactionary forces took their revenge, and Jacobi’s teaching stipend was suspended.  When he threatened to move to the University of Vienna, the royalists relented, so Jacobi too was able to weather the storm. 

The surprising footnote to this story is that Jacobi delivered lectures on a course on the application of differential equations to mechanics in the winter semester of 1847 – 1848 right in the midst of the political turmoil.  His participation in the extraordinary political events of that time apparently did not hamper him from giving one of the most extraordinary sets of lectures in mathematical physics.  Jacobi’s lectures of 1848 were the greatest advance in mathematical physics since Euler had reinterpreted Newton a hundred years earlier.  This is where Jacobi expanded on the work of Hamilton, establishing what is today called the Hamilton-Jacobi theory of dynamics.  He also derived and proved, using Liouville’s theorem of 1838, that the volume of phase space was an invariant in a conservative dynamical system [2].  It is tempting to imagine Jacobi returning home late at night, after rousing discussions of revolution at the Constitution Club, to set to work on his own revolutionary theories in physics.

Doppler and the Hungarian Revolution

Among all the states of Europe, the revolutions of 1848 posed the greatest threat to the Austrian Empire, which was a beaurocratic state entangling scores of diverse nationalities sprawled across the largest state of Europe.  The Austrian Empire was the remnant of the Holy Roman Empire that had succumbed to the Napoleonic invasion.  The lands that were controlled by Austria, after Metternich engineered the Congress of Vienna, included Poles, Ukranians, Romanians, Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Albanians and more.  Holding this diverse array of peoples together was already a challenge, and the revolutions of 1848 carried with them strong feelings of nationalism.  The revolutions spreading across Europe were the perfect catalyst to set off the Hungarian Revolution that grew into a war for independence, and the fierce fighting across Hungary could not be avoided even by cloistered physicists.

Christian Doppler (1803 – 1853) had moved in 1847 from Prague (where he had proposed what came to be called the Doppler effect in 1842 to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences) to the Academy of Mines and Forests in Schemnitz (modern Banská Štiavnica in Slovakia, but then part of the Kingdom of Hungary) with more pay and less work.  His health had been failing, and the strenuous duties at Prague had taken their toll.  If the goal of this move to an obscure school far from the center of Austrian power had been to lead a peaceful life, Doppler’s plans were sorely upset.

The news of the protests in Vienna arrived in Schemnitz on the 17th of March, and student demonstrations commenced immediately.  Amidst the uncertainty, Doppler requested a leave of absence from the summer semester and returned to Vienna.  It is not clear why he went there, whether to be near the center of excitement, or to take advantage of the free time to pursue his own researches.  While in Vienna he read a treatise before the Academy on galvano-electric effects.  He returned to Schemnitz in the Fall to relative peace, until the 12th of December, when the Hungarians rejected to acknowledge the new Emperor Franz Josef in Vienna, replacing his Uncle Ferdinand who was forced to abdicate, and the Hungarian war for independence began.

Görgey’s troops crossing the Sturec pass. Their ability to evade the Austrian pursuit was legendary (Image by Keiss Károly in the public domain).

One of Doppler’s former students from his days in Prague was appointed to command the newly formed Hungarian army.  General Arthur Görgey (1818 – 1916) moved to take possession of the northern mining towns (present day Slovakia) and occupied Schemnitz.  When Görgey learned that his old teacher was in the town he sent word to Doppler to meet him at his headquarters.  Meeting with a revolutionary and rebel could have marked Doppler as a traitor in Vienna, but he decided to meet him anyway, taking along one of his colleagues as a “witness” that the discussion were purely academic.  This meeting opens an interesting unsolved question in the history of physics. 

Around this time Doppler was interested in the dynamical properties of the pendulum for cases when the suspension wire was exceptionally long.  Experiments on such extreme pendula could provide insight into changes in gravity with height as well as the effects of the motion of the Earth.  For instance, Coriolis had published his paper on forces in rotating frames many years earlier in 1835.  Because Schemnitz was a mining town, there was ample access to deep mine shafts in which to set up a pendulum with a very long wire.  This is where the story becomes murky.  Within the family of Doppler’s descendants there are stories of Doppler setting up such an experiment, and even a night time visit to the Doppler house by Görgey.  The pendulum was thought to be one of the topics discussed by Doppler and Görgey at their first meeting, and Görgey (from his life as a scientist prior to becoming a revolution general) had arrived to help with the experiment [3]. 

This story is significant for two reasons.  First, it would be astounding to think of General Görgey taking a break from the revolution to do some physics for fun.  Görgey has not been graced by history with a benevolent reputation.  He was known as a hard and sometimes vicious leader, and towards the end of the short-lived Hungarian Revolution he displaced the President Kossuth to become the dictator of Hungary.  The second reason, which is important for the history of physics, is that if Doppler had performed this experiment in 1848, it would have preceded the famous experiment by Foucault by more than two years.  However, the paper published by Doppler around this time on the dynamics of the pendulum did not mention the experiment, and it remains an open question in the history of physics whether Doppler may have had priority over Foucault.

The Austrian Imperial Army laid siege to Schemnitz and commenced a short bombardment that displaced Görgey and his troops from the town.  Even as Schemnitz was being liberated, a letter arrived informing Doppler that his old mentor Stampfer at the University of Vienna was retiring and that he had been chosen to be his replacement.  The March Revolution had led to the abdication of the previous Austrian emperor and his replacement by the more liberal-minded Franz Josef who was interested in restructuring the educational system in the Austrian empire.  On the advice of Doppler’s supporters who were in the new government, the Institute of Physics was formed and Doppler was named as its first director.  He arrived in the spring of 1850 to take up his new post.

The Legacy of 1848

Despite the early successes and optimism of the revolutions of 1848, reactionary forces were quick to reverse many of the advances made for universal suffrage, constitutional government, freedom of the press, and freedom of expression.  In most cases, monarchs either retained power or soon returned.  Even the reviled Metternich returned to Vienna from exile in London in 1851.  Yet as is so often the case, once a door has been opened it is difficult to shut it again.  The pressure for reforms continued long after the revolutions faded away, and by 1870 many of the specific demands of the people had been instituted by most of the European states.  Russia was an exception, which may explain why the inevitable Russian Revolution half a century later was so severe.            

The revolutions of 1848 cannot be said to have had a long-lasting impact on the progress of physics, although they certainly had a direct impact on the lives of selected physicists.  The most lasting effect of the revolutions on science was the restructuring of educational systems, not only in Austria, but in many of the European states.  This was perhaps one of the first times when the social and economic benefits of science education to the national welfare was understood and implemented across Europe, although a similar recognition had occurred earlier during the French Revolution, for instance leading to the founding of the Ecole Polytechnique.  The most important, though subtle, effect of the revolutions of 1848 on society was the shift away from autocratic rule to democracy, and the freeing of expression and thought from rigid bounds.  The coming revolution in physics at the turn of the next century may have been helped a little by the revolutionary spirit that still echoed from 1848.

[1] pg. 201, Mike Rapport, “1848: Year of Revolution” (Basic Books, 2008)

[2] D. D. Nolte, The Tangled Tale of Phase Space, Chap. 6 in Galileo Unbound (Oxford University Press, 2018)

[3] Schuster, P. Moving the stars : Christian Doppler, his life, his works and principle, and the world after. Pöllauberg, Austria, Living Edition. (2005)