Salisbury, Donald Léon Rosenfeld and the challenge of the vanishing momentum in quantum electrodynamics. (English) Zbl 1228.81017 Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci., Part B, Stud. Hist. Philos. Mod. Phys. 40, No. 4, 363-373 (2009). Summary: L. Rosenfeld published in 1930 the first systematic Hamiltonian approach to Lagrangian models that possess a local gauge symmetry [Annalen d. Physik (5) 5, 113–152 (1930; JFM 56.1303.01)]. The application of this formalism to theories with local internal symmetries, such as electromagnetism in interaction with charged matter fields, is valid and complete, and predates by two decades the work by Dirac and Bergmann. Although he provided a group-theoretical justification for gauge fixing procedures that had just been implemented in the first expositions of quantum electrodynamics by Heisenberg and Pauli, and also by Fermi, his contribution went largely unnoticed. 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