线性代数发简英文版.docVIP

线性代数发展简介 HYPERLINK 94/xxds/old/ziliao/fazhan.htm 中文版 HYPERLINK 94/xxds/old/ziliao/fazhan1.htm 英文版 ON THE HISTORY OF DETERMINANTS By G. A. MILLER, University of The history of determinants is an unusually interesting part of the history of elementary mathematics in view of the fact that it illustrates very clearly some of the difficulties in this history which result from the use of technical terms therein without exhibiting the definite meaning which is to be given to these terms. Many modern writers have based their definitions of a determi- nant on the existence of a square matrix. This was done, for instance, in the widely used Weber-Wellstein Encyklopadie der Elementarmathematik, volume 1, 4th edition, 1922, page 304. From this point of view a determinant does not exist without its square matrix, and, judging from many of the textbooks on elementary mathematics, it is likely that many students consider the square matrix as an essential part of a determinant, so that the term determinant conveys to them a dual concept composed of a square matrix and a certain polynomial associated therewith. When they speak of the rows and columns of a determinant they naturally are thinking of its matrix and when they speak of the value thereof they are naturally thinking of the polynomial implied by the term determinant. When a student who is familiar with no definition of the term determinant except the dual one noted in the preceding paragraph meets with the common statement that the discovery of determinants is usually ascribed to G. W. Leibniz, he naturally concludes that a square matrix and a polynomial were associated by G. W. Leibniz in about the same way as they are associated at the present time. This is, however, not the case. In fact G. W. Leibniz associ- ated a polynomial with two square matrices and he derived this polynomial therefrom in a way which differs widely from the one now followed in expanding a determinant. Hence the question arises whether it is de