[Math] Hermann Weyl’s work on combinatorial topology and Kirchhoff’s current law in Spanish

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Hermann Weyl was one of the pioneers in the use of early algebraic/combinatorial topological methods in the problem of electrical currents on graphs and combinatorial complexes. The main article is "Repartición de Corriente en una red conductora", which appeared, written in Spanish, in 1923 in Revista Matemática Hispano-Americana:

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together with other less known papers.

Was there a particular cooperation around this topic between Hermann Weyl and the Spanish-speaking mathematical community? Did these articles just disappear from the mainstream of mathematical research?

I am aware of papers of Beno Eckmann from the 40's (Harmonische Funktionen und Randwertaufgaben auf einem Komplex).

Best Answer

The Spanish paper of Weyl is on John Baez' page. There's a brand new subject called Analysis Situs it's not even called "Topology" yet, and Weyl discusses what he could absorb from lectures at ETH Zurich in five years before, in 1918.

Here's some info from the Math Biography website on Weyl:

As a privatdozent at Göttingen, Weyl had been influenced by Edmund Husserl who held the chair of philosophy there from 1901 to 1916. Weyl married Helene Joseph, who had been a student of Husserl, in 1913; they had two sons. Helene, who came from a Jewish background, was a philosopher who was working as a translator of Spanish.

Not only did Weyl and his wife share an interest in philosophy, but they shared a real talent for languages. Language for Weyl held a special importance. He not only wrote beautifully in German, but later he wrote stunning English prose...

Looks like Hermann Weyl did not speak Spanish, but his wife did a translation.


This discussion of electrical networks and combinatorial topology is available in many places today in English. In Random Walks and Electric Networks Peter Doyle and J. Laurie Snell solve Markov chains with electrical networks.

These days we'd just say there is a planar graph $G = (V, E)$ and the currents are a functions $f: E \to \mathbb{R}$ satisfying a "conservation law" at each of the vertices $\sum_{v'\sim v} f(vv') = 0$. We could be even more abstract and say these are the elements of some chain complex: $V = C_0(X)$ and $E = C_1(X)$ and $f \in H^1(X)$.

The first inkling of the modern treatment could be by Yves Colin de Verdière:

Y. Colin de Verdière, Réseaux électriques planaires I, Comment. Math. Helv. 69 (1994), 351-374. Also available here.