Ernst Christian Julius Schering

Ernst Schering, steel engraving

Ernst Christian Julius Schering (born July 13, 1833 in the forester's house Sandbergen near Bleckede ; † November 2, 1897 in Göttingen ) was a German mathematician and editor of the works of Carl Friedrich Gauß .

Live and act

Ernst Schering was the son of a forester, attended the Johanneum grammar school in Lüneburg (graduated with secondary school leaving certificate, he took his Abitur in Hanover in 1853) and studied civil engineering in Hanover from 1850 and mathematics and physics in Göttingen with Gauß, Moritz Abraham Stern from 1852 , Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet , Bernhard Riemann , Wilhelm Eduard Weber . In 1857 he received his doctorate (on the mathematical theory of electrical currents) and habilitated in 1858 (on the conformal mapping of the ellipsoid on the plane).

In 1860 he became associate professor (after he had refused a call to Gießen) and in 1868 full professor in Göttingen, at the same time as he was appointed head of the geomagnetic observatory, with Wilhelm Klinkerfues taking over the astronomical part of the Göttingen observatory . The observatory had previously been headed by Gauss, who lived in Schering's apartment in the observatory. After the suicide of Klinkerfues in 1884, he was also head of the astronomical department for two years. In 1889 Schering became a secret councilor.

Schering dealt with both pure mathematics and theoretical physics. From 1859 he was commissioned to organize the estate of Gauss, who had died in 1855. In 1863 he published Gauß's works from his estate on behalf of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, continued after his death under the direction of Felix Klein . He also wrote a biography of Bernhard Riemann , with whom he was close friends - he came from the same area as Riemann and had a similar early career.

From 1861 he was also officially commissioned to measure longitude in the Kingdom of Hanover.

From 1862 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen . In 1887/88 and 1890/91 he was its director. In 1875 he became a corresponding member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences .

His brother Karl Schering was a mathematics professor in Strasbourg and then a physics professor in Darmstadt. Together with Robert Haussner, he published Schering's works in two volumes in 1902 and 1909. His son Harald Schering was an electrical engineering professor in Hanover and namesake of the local Schering Institute. Schering was married to the daughter of the mathematics professor in Uppsala (and co-founder of Acta Mathematica) Carl Johan Malmstén .

Fonts

• Robert Haußner , Karl Schering (Ed.): Collected mathematical works by Ernst Schering
  • First volume with Ernst Schering's portrait , Mayer & Müller, Berlin 1902, pdf .
  • Second volume , Mayer & Müller, Berlin 1909.

literature

• Karl Arndt u. a. (Ed.) Göttinger Gelehre , Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag , 2001; Article by Samuel Patterson
• Rudolf Fritsch , Felix Schmeidler: Schering, Ernst Christian Julius (biography; PDF file, 47 kB)
• Rudolf Fritsch, Felix Schmeidler:  Schering, Ernst Christian Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 695 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Karl Schering: CV of Ernst Schering. In: #Schering 1909 , pages 449-472.
• W. Schur : Death notice. Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol. 145 (1897), p. 31 (obituary to ECJ Schering)

Web links

• Ernst Christian Julius Schering in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)