Amédée Mannheim

Amédée Mannheim

Victor Mayer Amédée Mannheim (born July 17, 1831 in Paris ; † December 11, 1906 there ) was a French mathematician , engineer and officer . He developed the scale system for the slide rule named after him .

Life

Amédée Mannheim began studying at the École polytechnique in Paris in 1848 at the age of 17. Two years later he went to Metz to the École d'application de l'artillerie et du génie .

After graduating from Metz, Mannheim became an officer in the French artillery. After a few years in the military, Mannheim was appointed to the École polytechnique in Paris in 1859 , while he continued his army career. His first job was that of a private lecturer . In 1863 he was appointed examiner. The following year Mannheim was appointed professor of descriptive geometry at the École polytechnique .

Mannheim ended his military career in 1890 after he had achieved the rank of colonel in the technical corps. He continued his classes at the École polytechnique until he retired in 1901 at the age of 70. In 1877 he was president of the Société Mathématique de France .

plant

During his studies in Metz around 1850, Mannheim developed a new scale system for the long-known slide rule. At the same time he introduced the already known movable rotor for more precise reading. With this he created the standard of the modern slide rule. Its scale arrangement of the slide rule became known worldwide as the Mannheim system .

Mannheim wrote numerous treatises on geometry. He studied the polar reciprocal transformation according to Michel Chasles and its effect on kinetic geometry. He also studied mathematical surfaces, especially Augustin Jean Fresnel's wave surfaces.

Awards

• 1872: Awarded the Prix ​​Poncelet of the Académie des Sciences
• 1878: Honorary member of the London Mathematical Society

literature

• E. Koppelman: Dictionary of Scientific Biography. , New York 1970-1990.
• Amédée Mannheim: Proc. London Mathematical Society. 5 (1907), 13.
• G. Loria: L'opera geometrica di A. Mannheim. Rendiconti del Circolo matimatico di Palermo 26 (1908), 1-63.
• G. Loria: A. Mannheim - soldier and mathematician. Scripta Mathematica 2 (1934), 337-342.
• C. Niven: Mannheim's researches on the wave surface. Quarterly J. Pure Appl. Math. 15 (1878), 242-257.
• AM Tokarenko: Development of the methods of the exact synthesis of mechanisms in England (1870s-1880s). Studies in the history of physics and mechanics 1988 'Nauka' (Moscow, 1988), 218–232. (Russian)

Web links

• Mannheim in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive of the University of St Andrews, Scotland.