The Ricci Calculus
The Ricci Calculus
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作者：
H. S. Ruse
绝对微分（他自己称之为绝对微分）很少受到关注，直到爱因斯坦将其用于广义相对论的表述，尽管经过大约十年的发展，它在1895年已经达到了成熟的形式。这是如此少的思想，事实上，在1901年利玛窦被拒绝了意大利皇家数学奖的理由是，微积分是”有用的，但不是必不可少的治疗一些数学问题”。尽管如此，他本人仍然相信它的价值，并在帕多瓦大学的一位年轻同事Tullio Levi-Civita的同情和支持下。这部作品也引起了一位年轻的美国人Luther Pfahler Eisenhart的兴趣，他
The absolute differential calculus, as he himself called it, gained little attention until Einstein used it for the formulation of general relativity, even though it had reached a mature form by 1895, after some ten years of growth. It was so little thought of, indeed, that in 1901 Ricci was denied the Italian Royal Prize in mathematics on the ground that the calculus was" useful but not essential for the treatment of some mathematical questions". Never-theless he himself retained a belief in its value, and in that had the sympathy and support of a young colleague at the University of Padua, Tullio Levi-Civita. The work captured the interest, too, of a young American, Luther Pfahler Eisenhart, who