Lorenz vs Lorentz. The controversy examined from the original texts

Abstract

The attribution of the condition div A + (1/c^2) dPhi/dt = 0 has been under discussion since 1938 as a question of priority between Ludvig Lorenz and Hendrik Lorentz. This work argues that the problem is of a different nature, and that the discussion does not close because it has never been specified what is being attributed. Drawing on the three versions of the 1867 paper and on six further primary sources, it is documented that three separable acts have been designated under a single name: the obtaining of the relation between potentials, its imposition as a restriction on the admissible potentials, and its denomination as a gauge. It is further documented that in none of the three versions of the 1867 paper does the word potential appear, that the magnetic field does not figure in it as a quantity of the theory, and that the vocabulary in which that paper is described today enters the literature after it was written. It is concluded that the disjunction between the two denominations, posed without specifying which of the three acts is being attributed, is ill formed.