Conflicts

Abstract

As a professor in Christiania, indeed, right back to the time of his engagement to marry Anna in 1873, Lie had worked with continuous groups, which would come to reveal themselves to be of such fundamental significance in formulating the basis of nature’s own laws. His work was noticed around Europe, although to a far lesser degree than he would have liked. Throughout the 1870s he had ongoing contact with Klein and Mayer in Germany, and to a certain degree as well, with mathematicians in France. In 1882, while Lie was giving lectures in Paris, a great change occurred in his relationship with the French. And it was Picard, more than anyone else, who had his eyes opened about what Lie’s theoretical interpretations could be used for.