Christoph Gudermann
Christoph Gudermann (born March 25, 1798 in Vienenburg , † September 25, 1852 in Münster ) was a German mathematician ; the Gudermann function is named after him .
Life
Christoph Gudermann was the son of a school teacher and, after studying at the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin , he also became a teacher in Berlin in 1822 with the state examination as a teacher. His doctoral supervisor at the university was Carl Friedrich Gauß .
He first became a teacher in Kleve in 1823 . In 1832 he became an associate professor for mathematics and in 1839 a full professor at the Theological and Philosophical Academy in Munster (the later university). During this time he taught Karl Weierstrass, among other things, in elliptical functions (1839/40); this subject had not previously been held in any other institute. Karl Weierstrass was strongly influenced by this lecture, so that he himself continued researching in this direction.
Gudermann never received fame for his research on spherical geometry (geometry of the sphere) and special functions (elliptical and hyperbolic functions), as he specialized too much on individual cases and did not publish as much work on the subjects. Moritz Cantor mentions as a further reason his habit of introducing his own new names everywhere in his treatment of elliptical functions, which were otherwise not in use. But he also called him a deep thinker in his fields of work. He first made a name for himself with a book on spherical geometry from 1830, which earned him promotion to senior teacher and soon afterwards the professorship. He saw plane geometry as a special case (sphere with infinite radius) of spherical geometry and therefore gave priority to geometry on the sphere.
In his book on spherical geometry from 1830 there is also Bodenmiller's sentence (the three circles over the diagonals of a complete four-sided intersection in two points) with the reference to the author Bodenmiller, about whom nothing else is known.
A prize awarded by students for excellent teaching at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is named after him.
literature
- Moritz Cantor: Gudermann, Christoph . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 87 f.
- Gottlob Kirschmer: Gudermann, Christoph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 252 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Rudolf Fritsch Gudermann, Bodenmiller and the Bodenmiller-Steiner theorem , Didaktik der Mathematik, Volume 3, 1992, pp. 165–187
Fonts
- Ground plan of the analytical sphere, Cologne, DuMont-Schauberg 1830
- Lower Spherical Textbook, 1836
- The theory of potential functions 1832
- Modular functions and modular integrals 1844
Web links
- Literature by and about Christoph Gudermann in the catalog of the German National Library
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Christoph Gudermann. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Individual evidence
- ↑ See ADB
- ↑ Various variants are in addition to Carl Friedrich Gauss or Jakob Steiner named
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gudermann, Christoph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 25, 1798 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 25, 1852 |
| Place of death | Muenster |