ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Electromagnetic momentum and energy conservation in Göttingen electrodynamics, 1900-1909

• In Event: Emergence and Interpretation of the Principle of Energy Conservation in the Long 19th Century

English Abstract

The Göttingen physicist Max Abraham's 1902 definitions of
electromagnetic momentum and the mass of the newly-discovered electron
are shown to have allowed Hermann Minkowski to propose, in the wake of
relativity theory, a spacetime mechanics in which energy conservation
is a purely formal consequence of the equations of motion. Similarly,
Minkowski's controversial asymmetric energy-momentum tensor of the
electromagnetic field (1908) finds its intellectual roots in the
history of electromagnetic momentum in the early 1890s, with
J. J. Thomson's notion of Faraday tubes. In response to Minkowski's
theory, Abraham immediately proposed a slightly different -- symmetric
-- energy-momentum tensor. Based in part on newly-discovered archival
documents, and drawing on C. Liu's study (1991) of the
Nordström-Abraham controversy (1909--1911), and O. Darrigol's review
(2023) of Poincaré's critique of Lorentz's theory (1900), my paper
examines the context of Abraham's formulation of electromagnetic
momentum, and shows in detail how both he and Minkowski responded to
the discovery of the principle of relativity in 1905 in their
respective theories of the electrodynamics of moving media.

Author

• Scott A. Walter, Nantes University