Abraham Wolff
Abraham Joseph ben Simon Wolff Metz (also Wulff) (* around 1710 in Frankfurt am Main ; † November 4, 1795 in Berlin ) was a Jewish mathematician ("arithmetic master") in Berlin.
Life
Wolff was a mathematician valued by Euler and Lambert . Experts suggest that Wolff the last gap in Euler's Fermat number - Theorem has solved.
From 1770 he worked as a calculator in the gold and silver manufactory run by Veitel Heine Ephraim since 1762 . At that time he lived in a room in the house of the philosopher and Jewish enlightener Moses Mendelssohn , was his friend and interlocutor for algebraic and geometrical problems and teacher of his children. He is believed to be the author of a mathematical textbook in Hebrew .
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing took Wolff as a model for his figure of the dervish Al Hafi in his work Nathan the Wise . The following dialogue is reproduced between Moses Mendelssohn and Johann Jacob Engel : “Who is this Abraham Wolff? - One of my Jewish friends. Not exactly a scholar, but a man of great talent for mathematics. ... Can you get to know him, the man? - O yes! by Lessing. - Through Lessing? It's not here. - But his Nathan is here. Read the role of Al Hafiz and you will have the whole character, the whole soul from my good Abraham Wolff, who really sat him for this role. You cannot care about the external reputation of the good, savage, noble, as Nathan calls his Al Hafi. "
literature
- Hans Lausch: Abraham Wolff "arithmetic master". An important Berlin Jew of the Enlightenment period. In: Ashkenaz. Volume 2. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1992, pp. 227-237, ISSN 1016-4987
Web links
- Literature by and about Abraham Wolff in the catalog of the German National Library
- Characteristics of Wolff. In: Aschkenas - Journal for the History and Culture of the Jews, Volume 2 (1)
Individual evidence
- ^ Emil A. Fellmann : Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnia . Series 4, A, Commercium Epistolicum, Volume 2, 1998, page 737 ( digitized version )
- ↑ Meeting reports of the Berlin Mathematical Society , 2001
- ↑ Britta L. Behm: Moses Mendelssohn and the transformation of Jewish education in Berlin , in: Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte in Deutschland. Volume 4, 2002, p. 153 ( books.google.de )
- ↑ Aschkenas, Volume 4. Verlag Böhlau, 1994, p. 296 ( books.google.de )
- ↑ Johann Jacob Engel: The philosopher for the world . books.google.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wolff, Abraham |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wolff, Abraham Joseph; Wolff Metz, Abraham Joseph ben Simon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Jewish mathematician in Berlin |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1710 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 4, 1795 |
| Place of death | Berlin |