More on Gerber's Velocity-Dependent Gravitational Potential

摘要

I have made a simple discovery about Gerber's velocity-dependent potential that casts new light on the Gerber-Seeliger controversy [1], as well as on the Lagrangian method in application to such potentials. In brief, toward the end of the nineteenth century Paul Gerber (thought by Beckmann [2] to be a German high-school teacher), claimed to deduce from the assumption of retarded action of gravitational potential a velocitydependent 'potential' that predicted by the Lagrangian method a force producing Mercury's well-known observed anomalous perihelion advance [3]. This was many years before Einstein's general theory predicted exactly the same thing on the basis of entirely different premises.