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Copyright of Revue d'Histoire des Sciences is the property of Librairie Armand Colin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue d'Histoire des Sciences is the property of Librairie Armand Colin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the role of action and its invariance according to the logic of the Palermo Memoir, exploring how the systematic study of the Memoir reveals the mathematical contribution of physicist Henri Poincaré to relativistic mechanics. The article describes the history of the Least Action Principle articulated in the late 19th century, the origins of Poincaré's Hamiltonian electromagnetic action, and the relation of the invariance of action to the velocity of dependence of an electron lagrangian. Other subjects under discussion include electron models, the Lorentz equation, and the general mass-energy equivalence.