G. JB. Becker — " Potential" a BemouUiaii Term. 97 



Art. XI. — "Potential" a Bernoullian Term; by 

 Geo. F. Becker. 



Potential as the name of a function was undoubtedly 

 introduced by Gauss in 1840. He wrote: "Zur bequemern 

 Handhabung der dazu dienenden Untersuchungen werden wir 

 uns erlauben dieses Y mit einer besondern Benennung zu 

 belegen, und die Grosse das Potential der Massen, worauf sie 

 sich bezieht, nennen."* But Gauss was certainly not the first 

 to employ the corresponding adjective in a similar sense. 

 George Green employed the term potential function in 1828 

 in his famous paper on electricity and magnetism. He intro- 

 duced the phrase by remarking that certain memoirs of 

 Poisson's " are in fact founded upon the consideration of what 

 have, in this essay, been termed potential functions."f In 

 section 1 of the paper he says: "As this function . . . will 

 occur very frequently in what follows, we have ventured to 

 call it the potential function belonging to the system." No- 

 where in this paper can I find the word potential used as a 

 noun, while "potential function" is met with on almost every 

 page. 



Most physicists give Gauss full credit for independent in- 

 vestigation of the potential, but Todhunter refers to the matter 

 in a manner which would seem to convey an innuendo. " We 

 may observe," he says, " that the name Potential was first 

 used by the late George Green. . . . Gauss used the word in 

 his memoir . . . published in 1840. As Gauss does not refer 

 to any previous authority we are, I presume, to infer that he 

 had independently selected the name.";}: As was pointed out 

 above, this is not a correct statement, since Green did not use 

 the name potential but only the adjective ; and the effect of 

 the words "1 presume" is to suggest a doubt whether Gauss 

 might not have been acquainted with Green's nomenclature, 

 and consequently also with the theory portions of which he is 

 credited with rediscovering. Gauss however never displayed 

 any tendency to plagiarism. 



It is not very generally known, though it has been men- 

 tioned in modern literature, that Daniel Bernoulli and Euler 

 employed the term vis jpotentialis. A single passage from 

 Euler will illustrate its use : " Quamobrem cum vir celeberri- 



*Allgemeine Lehrsatze in Bez. auf . . . Anziehungs- u. Abstossungs-Krafte. 

 Collected works, vol. v, 1867, p. 200. 



f Reprinted in Crelle's Journal, vol. xxxix, p. 77, 1850, and in his collected 

 papers. 



% Math. hist, theories of attraction and the figure of the earth, vol. ii, 1873, 

 p. 26. 



