Maupertuis' Principle - History

History

Maupertuis was the first to publish a principle of least action, where he defined action as, which was to be minimized over all paths connecting two specified points. However, Maupertuis applied the principle only to light, not matter (see the 1744 Maupertuis reference below). He arrived at the principle by considering Snell's law for the refraction of light, which Fermat had explained by Fermat's principle, that light follows the path of shortest time, not distance. This troubled Maupertuis, since he felt that time and distance should be on an equal footing: "why should light prefer the path of shortest time over that of distance?" Accordingly, Maupertuis asserts with no further justification the principle of least action as equivalent but more fundamental than Fermat's principle, and uses it to derive Snell's law. Maupertuis specifically states that light does not follow the same laws as material objects.

A few months later, well before Maupertuis' work appeared in print, Euler independently defined action in its modern abbreviated form and applied it to the motion of a particle, but not to light (see the 1744 Euler reference below). Euler also recognized that the principle only held when the speed was a function only of position, i.e., when the total energy was conserved. (The mass factor in the action and the requirement for energy conservation were not relevant to Maupertuis, who was concerned only with light.) Euler used this principle to derive the equations of motion of a particle in uniform motion, in a uniform and non-uniform force field, and in a central force field. Euler's approach is entirely consistent with the modern understanding of Maupertuis' principle described above, except that he insisted that the action should always be a minimum, rather than a stationary point.

Two years later, Maupertuis cites Euler's 1744 work as a "beautiful application of my principle to the motion of the planets" and goes on to apply the principle of least action to the lever problem in mechanical equilibrium and to perfectly elastic and perfectly inelastic collisions (see the 1746 publication below). Thus, Maupertuis takes credit for conceiving the principle of least action as a general principle applicable to all physical systems (not merely to light), whereas the historical evidence suggests that Euler was the one to make this intuitive leap. Remarkably, Maupertuis' definitions of the action and protocols for minimizing it in this paper are inconsistent with the modern approach described above. Thus, Maupertuis' published work does not contain a single example in which he used Maupertuis' principle (as presently understood).

In 1751, Maupertuis' priority for the principle of least action was challenged in print (Nova Acta Eruditorum of Leipzig) by an old acquaintance, Johann Samuel Koenig, who quoted a 1707 letter purportedly from Leibniz that described results similar to those derived by Euler in 1744. However, Maupertuis and others demanded that Koenig produce the original of the letter to authenticate its having been written by Leibniz. Koenig only had a copy and no clue as to the whereabouts of the original. Consequently, the Berlin Academy under Euler's direction declared the letter to be a forgery and that its President Maupertuis could continue to claim priority for having invented the principle. Koenig continued to fight for Leibniz's priority and soon luminaries such as Voltaire and the King of Prussia, Frederick II were engaged in the quarrel. However, no progress was made until the turn of the twentieth century, when other independent copies of Leibniz's letter were discovered. The present scholarly consensus seems to be that the quotations from Leibniz are indeed genuine, i.e., that he had invented Maupertuis' principle and applied it to several mechanical problems by 1707 (37 years before Maupertuis and Euler) but did not publish his findings.