Carl Runge

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Carl Runge, a photo from the Voit Collection .

Carl David Tolmé Runge (born August 30, 1856 in Bremen , † January 3, 1927 in Göttingen ) was a German mathematician .

biography

Youth and education

Runge was the son of the merchant Julius Runge and his wife Fanny Tolmé, who came from England. He spent the first years of his childhood in Havana , where his father ran the Danish consulate. In 1875 he graduated from high school in Bremen . Then he accompanied his now widowed mother to Italy for half a year. He first studied literature and philosophy , then mathematics at the University of Munich . In 1877 he continued his studies at the University of Berlin , where he was particularly influenced by the mathematicians Kronecker and Weierstrass . After 1880 when Weierstrass and Kummer with the work over the curvature, torsion and curvature of the geodesic drawn on a surface curves doctorate was habilitated he 1,883th

University professor in Hanover and Göttingen

In the spring of 1886 Runge became a professor of mathematics at the Technical University of Hanover . In 1904, at the request of Felix Klein , he was appointed to the newly created professorship for applied mathematics at the Georg-August University in Göttingen , the first of its kind in Germany.

Work as a mathematician

Initially, his field of work was purely mathematical. From Kronecker he got the suggestion for number theory and from Weierstrass for function theory . During his time in Berlin, he found out about the Balmer series from his future father-in-law (whose family he frequented) . In Hanover, he investigated other line spectra together with Heinrich Kayser and thus made contributions to the physics of spectroscopy . In Göttingen, together with Martin Wilhelm Kutta, he developed the Runge-Kutta method for the numerical solution of initial value problems . His investigation of interpolation polynomials and their behavior when the degree of the polynomial is increased is also known (see Runge's phenomenon ). In function theory, he examined the approximability of holomorphic functions and thus founded the Runge theory .

Runge's main scientific achievement, as his son-in-law Courant once noted, was:

"To re-tie the torn threads to the applications, to help restore the unity of mathematical science including the applications"

International contacts

Runge has made several major trips . His language skills, especially English, helped him a lot. In 1897 he attended the meeting of the British Association in Toronto and then all the major American observatories. Together with Karl Schwarzschild , he undertook a solar eclipse expedition to Algiers in 1906 . In the winter of 1909 he went to Columbia University in New York as an exchange professor for a year . This was followed by a second tour of America, where he visited universities and observatories as well as the places of his childhood in Havana. In the summer of 1926 he attended the meeting of the British Association at Oxford .

personality

Runge is portrayed as a lovable and humble person. He loved house music and played the piano himself. He loved sports such as tennis, ice skating and skiing, gymnastics, hiking, swimming, boating and cycling. In Hanover, he regularly cycled between his house in the village of Kirchrode and the university, which is 10 km away. He almost never cleaned his bike and used to say: "After all, a dynamic equilibrium is established: just as much dirt as splashes on it every day, falls off by itself every day".

family

In 1887 he married Aimée, the daughter of the Berlin physiologist Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond . With her he had four daughters and two sons, one of whom in the First World War fell.

In Göttingen he lived with his family at Wilhelm-Weber-Straße 21, not far from Felix Klein.

  • His daughter Nerina (Nina) was married to Richard Courant .
  • His daughter Iris Runge was one of the first female industrial mathematicians. She worked at Osram and Telefunken.
  • His son Wilhelm Tolmé Runge worked in high frequency technology at Telefunken.

Memberships, honors

literature

Fonts

  • with König lectures on numerical computing. In: Basic Teachings. Springer, 1924 ( gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de ).
  • About applied mathematics In: Mathematische Annalen. Volume 44, 1894 ( gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de ).
  • Analytical geometry of the plane. BG Teubner, 1908 ( name.umdl.umich.edu University of Michigan Historical Math Collection).
  • About the numerical resolution of differential equations. In: Math. Annals. Volume 46, 1895, pp. 167-178, ( gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de Runge-Kutta method)
  • About empirical functions and the interpolation between equidistant ordinates . In: Journal of Mathematics and Physics . tape 46 . BG Teubner, Leipzig 1901, p. 224–243 ( iris.univ-lille1.fr [accessed June 4, 2014] Runge phenomenon).

Web links

Commons : Carl Runge  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 208.
  2. ^ TH Hannover (ed.): The teaching staff of the Technical University of Hannover 1831–1956, Hannover: TH Hannover 1956, p. 8.


personal data
SURNAME Runge, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Runge, Carl David Tolmé
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1927
Place of death Goettingen