Theory of Lie groups
Teoría de los grupos de Lie
- Date
- 1873-1874 · confidence medium
- Place
- Christiania (present-day Oslo), Norway
- Credited to
- Sophus Lie
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
After years of collaboration with Felix Klein in Berlin, Paris and Göttingen, Lie developed during the winter of 1873-1874 a theory of continuous transformation groups describing the symmetries of differential equations, much as Galois's finite groups describe the symmetries of algebraic equations. His work unified geometry, algebra and analysis in a common framework.
What it led to
- Klein's Erlangen programme
- Modern theoretical physics (symmetries in quantum mechanics and relativity)
Built on
- Galois theory and group theory1832
- Galois's group theory