Carl Gottfried Neumann

Carl Gottfried Neumann

Carl Gottfried Neumann, etching from 1912

Carl Gottfried Neumann (born May 7, 1832 in Königsberg (Prussia) , † March 27, 1925 in Leipzig ) was a German mathematician .

Life

Carl Gottfried Neumann was the son of the physicist and mineralogist Franz Ernst Neumann (1798–1895) and attended the well-known mathematical-physical seminar, which was founded in 1834 by his father and Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi in Königsberg. He studied in Königsberg under Otto Hesse , where he received his doctorate in 1856. After his habilitation in Halle in 1858, he worked there first as a private lecturer and from 1863 as an associate professor. In 1863 he moved to Basel , 1865 to Tübingen and in 1868 was offered a position at the University of Leipzig , where he worked for 42 years.

Carl Neumann married Mathilde Hermine Elise Klose, daughter of the secret registrar Heinrich Theodor Klose , on April 7, 1864 in the St. Matthew's Church in Berlin . The marriage remained childless.

Neumann died on March 27, 1925 and was buried in the New Johannisfriedhof in Leipzig. Neumann's nephew, the mathematician Ernst Richard Neumann , was able to improve his uncle's results on potential theory .

Awards

In 1893 Neumann was admitted as a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and in 1895 as a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1897 he received the order Pour le mérite for science and the arts and the Bavarian Maximilian Order for science and art . The Philosophical Faculty in Königsberg honored him in 1906, 1916 and 1922. When the University of Leipzig celebrated its 500th anniversary in 1909, Neumann was appointed to the Privy Council as its senior at the time .

Scientific work

Neumann worked on the Dirichlet problem and the Neumann boundary conditions are named after him. He can be regarded as one of the founders of the theory of integral equations, the Neumann series is named after him.

His name is associated with the "method of the arithmetic mean" and the "theory of the Bessel and spherical functions". In the field of mathematical physics, he wrote articles on analytical mechanics and potential theory in particular. He introduced the logarithmic potential. What is particularly striking is Neumann's very special way of working, which is particularly impressive due to the clarity and simplicity of the thought processes and ideas. Mathematically and physically, he also explained the deflection of the plane of polarization of light by electrical and magnetic forces. In physics, he stuck to Newton's theory of action at a distance . For the distribution of electricity and heat in a ring, he solved the problems by introducing new coordinates into difficult equations. He also clarified questions about the steady state of temperature in a homogeneous body that were unknown at the time.

Together with Alfred Clebsch he founded the journal Mathematische Annalen .

literature

• Jürgen Batt:  Neumann, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 133 ( digitized version ).
• Otto Hölder : Carl Neumann. Obituary dated November 14, 1925 in the public meeting of the mathematical-physical class of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Volume LXXXVII - here: Special print with the directory of the 176 publications by Carl Neumann.
• Karl-Heinz Schlote : On the development of mathematical physics in Leipzig (I) - the beginning of the Neumann era. In: NTM 9, 2001, pp. 229-245.
• Eberhard Neumann-Redlin von Meding : Carl Gottfried Neumann, on the 175th birthday of the Leipzig mathematician. In: Königsberger Bürgerbrief. No. 70, 2007, pp. 56-57.
• Carl Gottfried Neumann: About the principles of the Galilei-Newtonian theory. Leipzig inaugural lecture. In: Herbert Beckert , Walter Purkert : Leipzig mathematical inaugural lectures. Selection from the years 1869–1922. Teubner, Leipzig 1987 (with biography).
• Hans Salié : Carl Neumann. In: Herbert Beckert, Horst Schumann (Ed.) 100 Years of Mathematical Seminar at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. German Science Publishers, Berlin 1981.

Fonts

• Dirichlet's principle in its application to Riemann's surfaces (BG Teubner, Leipzig, 1865)
• Lectures on Riemann's theory of Abel's integrals (BG Teubner, 1865)
• Theory of Bessel's functions. An analogue to the theory of ball functions (BG Teubner, 1867)
• Investigations into the logarithmic and Newtonian potential (BG Teubner, 1877)
• General investigations on Newton's principle of action at a distance, with special consideration for electrical effects (BG Teubner, 1896)
• About the method of the arithmetic mean (S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1887)
• The electrical forces: presentation and expansion of the mathematical theories developed by A. Ampère, F. Neumann, W. Weber, G. Kirchhoff (Teubner, 1873–1898)

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Gottfried Neumann  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Carl Gottfried Neumann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Carl Gottfried Neumann. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Literature by and about Carl Gottfried Neumann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Overview of the courses of Carl Gottfried Neumann at the University of Leipzig (summer semester 1869 to winter semester 1910)
• Carl Gottfried Neumann in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
• Biographical summary on the occasion of the 175th birthday