Alexander von Brill

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Alexander Wilhelm Brill , von Brill from 1897 , (born September 20, 1842 in Darmstadt , † June 18, 1935 in Tübingen ) was a German mathematician.

Alexander von Brill
Tübingen city cemetery

life and work

Brill was the son of the book printing company owner Heinrich Konrad Brill (1808–91) and his wife Julie Henriette, nee. Wiener (1820-1903). After attending the Darmstadt grammar school , he studied architecture and mathematics (with Alfred Clebsch ) at the TH Karlsruhe from 1860 , where his uncle Christian Wiener was also professor for descriptive geometry. In 1863 he graduated with a degree in architecture and a teaching degree in mathematics. In 1863 he followed Clebsch to the University of Giessen , where he received his doctorate in 1864 and completed his habilitation in 1867. In between he was in Berlin in 1865/6 , where he studied with Karl Weierstraß , Ernst Eduard Kummer and Leopold Kronecker . As in Giessen, he financed this through teaching activities and private lessons. Then he was a private lecturer in Giessen (where Paul Gordan was an associate professor, Clebsch went to Göttingen in 1868).

Brill became a professor at the TH Darmstadt in 1869 and a professor at the TH Munich in 1875, where Felix Klein was his colleague from 1875 to 1880 .

Like Klein, Brill was a dedicated teacher who valued clarity. As a trained architect, he designed and built mathematical models himself. Her students in Munich included Adolf Hurwitz , Walther von Dyck , Carl Runge , Max Planck , Karl Rohn , Luigi Bianchi , and Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro .

In 1884 Brill became a full professor at the University of Tübingen and was rector there from 1896 to 1897. In Tübingen he worked partly with Hermann von Stahl , whom he brought to Tübingen. Brill retired on October 1, 1918 at the age of 77 and replaced his position for another semester.

Brill dealt with algebraic geometry . In 1874 he and Max Noether investigated the functional fields of algebraic curves and proved a. a. the Riemann-Roch theorem (Mathematische Annalen Vol. 7, pp. 269-310) with algebraic methods. Their joint large overview work from 1894 in the annual report of the German Mathematicians Association on the history of the theory of algebraic curves also became known. The work of Brill and Noether stood at the beginning of the treatment of algebraic geometry with purely algebraic methods. Her work radiated particularly to Italy, where a strong school of algebraic geometry developed around Enriques , Severi and Castelnuovo .

Further work concerned algebraic correspondence (Cayley-Brill correspondence principle) and algebraic space curves. He also dealt with mathematical physics, e.g. B. with the mechanics of Heinrich Hertz and Einstein's principle of relativity. Brill even published the second oldest textbook on the theory of relativity (after a book by Max von Laue in 1911) in 1912. He was also very interested in the history of mathematics and studied the works of Johannes Kepler (whose last publication was in 1930 ). His students Max Caspar (1880–1956) and Walther von Dyck were responsible for the edition of Kepler's works in Munich.

He was u. a. Member of the Accademia dei Lincei . He was an honorary member (1927) and 1907 chairman of the German Mathematicians Association ( DMV ). Alexander von Brill was awarded the Cross of Honor of the Order of the Württemberg Crown in 1897 , which was associated with the personal title of nobility. From 1920 to 1925 Brill was chairman of the Württemberg Society for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , the Leopoldina (Halle) and the Göttingen Society of Sciences .

Brill was born with Anna in 1875. Schleiermacher (1848–1952) married and had three sons and a daughter. Among them were the later president of the Reichsausgleichsamt Alexander Brill, Prof. Eduard Brill and the manufacturer August Brill.

Fonts

literature

  • Gerhard Betsch: Alexander von Brill. In: Building blocks for the history of the University of Tübingen, Volume 3 (1987), 71 - 90.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Württemberg 1907, page 35


personal data
SURNAME Brill, Alexander von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brill, Alexander Wilhelm von (full name); Brill, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1935
Place of death Tübingen