Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Sophus Lie
Marius Sophus Lie (December 17, 1842 - February 18, 1899) was a Norwegian-born mathematician who largely created the theory of continuous symmetry , and applied it to the study of geometric structures and differential equations. Lie's principal tool, and one of his greatest achievements, was the discovery that continuous transformation groups (now called Lie groups) could be better understood by "linearizing" them, and studying the corresponding generating vector fields (the so-called infinitesimal generators). The generators obey a linearized version of the group law called the commutator bracket, and have the structure of what we today, in honour of Lie, call a Lie algebra.
09-23-2007 01:00:40
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The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details