arXiv subjects

María Florentina Mendoza Urán

Publications and source records attributed to María Florentina Mendoza Urán.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Relation Before Lorenz: Kirchhoff, 1857, and the Symbols Lorenz Inherited

A relation between the quantities now called the scalar potential and the vector potential, of the same form, up to a sign, as the one the literature attributes to Ludvig Lorenz in 1867, was written ten years earlier by Gustav Kirchhoff, with the same status: derived, unnumbered and unnamed. This paper documents, on the basis of the 1857 originals, that Kirchhoff obtains the relation as the result of a calculation and does not impose it; that the quantity now called the vector potential bears no name at all in his text, whereas the scalar one bears the name "Potentialfunction", potential function, in both papers; that Lorenz writes those same letters, $Ω$, U, V and W, and inherits with them the absence of a name for the three components, although the relation he writes is in other quantities, $α$, $β$ and $γ$, and carries the opposite sign; and that the English translation of one of the two papers suppresses the word "function" from the term "Potentialfunction", with which Kirchhoff names his scalar quantity. The paper concludes that the pattern documented in the 1867 paper predates Lorenz and comes from the source from which he starts: a relation without number or name, components without a denomination, and a vocabulary added later.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2026

The Price of Removing the Scaffolding: Maxwell wrote something about Ampère that years later would be done to him

In the history of physics, the name scaffolding has been given to whatever served to raise a theory and is afterwards removed because, it is said, it is no longer needed. This article documents, from the originals, what it cost Maxwell's theory when that method was applied to it: what was removed from it, who did it, with what argument, and how over the years it had to be recovered because it was understood that it was needed after all. It also records what Maxwell himself missed in Ampère, what he calls the traces of the scaffolding: the template with which Ampère himself had given shape to his work.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2026

Lorenz vs Lorentz. The controversy examined from the original texts

The attribution of the condition div A + (1/c^2) dPhi/dt = 0 has been under discussion since 1938 as a question of priority between Ludvig Lorenz and Hendrik Lorentz. This work argues that the problem is of a different nature, and that the discussion does not close because it has never been specified what is being attributed. Drawing on the three versions of the 1867 paper and on six further primary sources, it is documented that three separable acts have been designated under a single name: the obtaining of the relation between potentials, its imposition as a restriction on the admissible potentials, and its denomination as a gauge. It is further documented that in none of the three versions of the 1867 paper does the word potential appear, that the magnetic field does not figure in it as a quantity of the theory, and that the vocabulary in which that paper is described today enters the literature after it was written. It is concluded that the disjunction between the two denominations, posed without specifying which of the three acts is being attributed, is ill formed.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2026

The Whittaker-Maxwell Scaffolding. Scaffolding or template: what remains of a model when it is removed

This paper discusses the metaphor, originating with Whittaker, according to which Maxwell's model of molecular vortices was the scaffolding by means of which the equations of electromagnetism were erected, removed afterwards without consequence for the building. It is argued here that the metaphor describes badly what happened, and it is shown that whoever upholds it today transcribes, within that same text, the quotations that belie it. The paper examines what was actually removed in 1865, which materials of the model still operate inside the equations under other names, and proposes in its place the figure of the template, taken from sheet-metal layout work. The discussion is situated with respect to the work of Daniel M. Siegel and Cameron Lazaroff-Puck, who maintain from the history of science the constitutive character of the model. It closes with a criterion for telling one case from the other.

physics.hist-ph↗