Gabriel Koenigs

Gabriel Xavier Paul Koenigs (born January 17, 1858 in Toulouse , Haute-Garonne department , † October 29, 1931 in Paris ) was a French mathematician.

Live and act

Koenigs studied from 1879 at the École normal supérieure (ENS), where Jean Gaston Darboux was one of his teachers, received his agrégation in 1882 and received his doctorate in the same year (Les propriétés infinitésimales de l'espace régé). In 1882/83 he was Agrégé Répétiteur at the ENS, from 1883 lecturer in mechanics at the Faculté des Sciences in Besançon and in 1885 lecturer in analysis in Toulouse . From 1886 he taught at the ENS and also until 1895 analytical mechanics at the Collège de France . In 1895 he became assistant professor and in 1897 professor of mechanics at the Sorbonne .

Koenigs combined studies in theoretical mechanics (for example application of the theory of the integral variants by Henri Poincaré ) with experiments in his own laboratory, especially on heat engines. In addition to mechanics and kinematics, he dealt with analysis and geometry, the latter heavily influenced by Darboux, Felix Klein and Julius Plücker . In analysis he dealt with iteration of complex functions following Ernst Schröder (1884/85).

In 1896 Koenigs was President of the French Mathematical Society. He worked on the French edition of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences . In 1918 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences .

After the First World War he was Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the newly established International Mathematical Union (IMU), which he used to exclude Germany, Austria, Hungary and other former opponents in the First World War from the IMU. With other French mathematicians he succeeded in this at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Strasbourg in 1920 and in Toronto in 1924 and he wanted to boycott the congress in Bologna in 1928, but did not succeed due to the resistance of Salvatore Pincherle and others. He ignored criticism of his approach and did not answer any correspondence in this regard. He remained General Secretary of the IMU until his death in 1931.

Honors

• Knight of the Legion of Honor
• 1890 Prix ​​Bordin
• 1913 Poncelet Prize
• The boulevard Gabriel Koenigs in Toulouse was named in his honor

Fonts (selection)

• Memoire on the lignes géodésiques . Imp.nationale, Paris 1894.
• La géométrie réglée et ses applications . Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1895.
• Leçons de cinématique . Hermann, Paris 1897.
• Introduction a une théorie nouvelle des mechanismes . Hermann, Paris 1905.
• Mémoires sur les courbes conjuguées dans le mouvement relatif le plus général de deux corps solides . Paris 1910.

Web links

• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Gabriel Koenigs. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .