The role of virtual work in Levi-Civita's parallel transport

The current literature on history of science reports that Levi-Civita’s parallel transport was motivated by his attempt to provide the covariant derivative of the absolute differential calculus with a geometrical interpretation (For instance, see Scholz in The intersection of history and mathematics, Birkhauser, Basel, pp 203–230, 1994, Sect. 4). Levi-Civita’s memoir on the subject was explicitly aimed at simplifying the geometrical computation of the curvature of a Riemannian manifold. In the present paper, we wish to point out the possible role implicitly played by the principle of virtual work in Levi-Civita’s conceptual reasoning to formulate parallel transport.

On the role of virtual work in Levi-Civita’s parallel transport

The role of virtual work in Levi-Civita's parallel transport

International audience; According to current history of science, Levi-Civita introduced parallel transport solely to give a geometrical interpretation to the covariant derivative of absolute differential calculus. Levi-Civita, however, searched a simple computation of the curvature of a Riemannian manifold, basing on notions of the Italian school of mathematical physics of his time: holonomic constraints, virtual displacements and work, which so have a remarkable, if not dominant, role in the origin of parallel transport.