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Carlo Beenakker
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V.J. Katz in History of Topology:

Although Cartan realized in 1899 [1] that the three theorems of vector calculus (Gauss, Green, Stokes) could be easily stated using differential forms, it was Edouard Goursat (1858-1936) who in 1917 [2] first noted that these three theorems were all special cases of a generalised Stokes theorem for differential forms (first stated, in coordinate free form, by Volterra in 1889 [3]).

[1] E. Cartan, Sur certaines expressions différentielles et sur le problème de Pfaff, Ann. École Normale 16 (1899) 230-332.

[2] E. Goursat, Sur certaines systèmes d'équations aux différentielles totales et sur une généralisation du problème de Pfaff, Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse (3) 7 (1917), 1-58.

[3] V. Volterra, Sulle funzioni coniugate, Rendiconti Accademia dei Licei (4) 5 (1889), 599-611.

Carlo Beenakker
  • 188.1k
  • 18
  • 448
  • 651