From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/9402 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: ptj@maths.cam.ac.uk Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Kinetic Energy Is A Riemann Metric On Configuration Space Date: 28 Oct 2017 00:52:16 +0100 Message-ID: References: , Reply-To: ptj@maths.cam.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1509318534 2431 195.159.176.226 (29 Oct 2017 23:08:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 23:08:54 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Harry Dole , "categories@mta.ca" , George Janelidze To: Marta Bunge Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Mon Oct 30 00:08:49 2017 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtp2.mta.ca ([198.164.44.40]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1e8wh9-0007rw-OS for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:08:43 +0100 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:55330) by smtp2.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1e8whD-0008Bw-6l; Sun, 29 Oct 2017 20:08:47 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e8wfj-0004aR-Dx for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Sun, 29 Oct 2017 20:07:15 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:9402 Archived-At: Dear Marta, Yes, I am sure Saunders saw his excursions into geometrical mechanics as a `hobby', and wasn't seeking to make original contributions (other than, perhaps, a new way of looking at established results). I remember, when I was in Chicago in 1975--76, he asked me whether I knew L.A. (Alan) Pars, a Cambridge mathematician whose book on dynamics was one of his favoured sources. (At the time I didn't know him -- he had retired long before I first went to Cambridge -- but I did meet him subsequently. He was then in his nineties, and was delighted to learn that Saunders was a fan of his work.) Regarding the spelling of Saunders's surname: my recollection is that, once he had decided to adopt the space in `Mac Lane', he was quite insistent that everyone should use it. Since that happened well before 1968, it's surprising that he allowed `MacLane' to stand on the title page of those 1968 notes. Best regards, Peter On Oct 27 2017, Marta Bunge wrote: >Dear George, > > > Although I have yet to read the Saunders MacLane's notes on "Geometrical > Mechanics" for a course given in Chicago in 1968 in some more detail, > just perusing them seems to me that the notes in question are based on > several sources which are explicitly mentioned in them and that are well > known in the subject matter. I doubt therefore that Saunders himself may > have thought of them as original in any way. Doubtless they must have > been useful to his students as well as to himself, for instance when > writing Chapter VIII (Forms of Space) and Chapter IX (Mechanics) of his > very nice book "Mathematics Form and Function", Springer-Verlag, 1968. > > > I am still not sure myself whether to write "Mac Lane" or "MacLane", and > I certainly did not know the story behind his opting for the latter. I am > sure that these notes will be useful to anybody not familiar with the > material exposed on them, and that we should certainly thank Harry Dole > for his having provided us with them. > > >Sincerely, > >Marta > > >************************************************ >Marta Bunge >Professor Emerita >Dept of Mathematics and Statistics >McGill University >Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2K6 >bunge@math.mcgill.ca >************************************************ > [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]