Georg Hermann Valentin

Georg Hermann Valentin (born December 9, 1848 in Berlin ; † November 24, 1926 there ) was a German librarian and mathematician.

Life

Georg Hermann Valentin attended the Friedrichswerder high school and studied mathematics at the University of Berlin from 1869 . He studied with Ernst Eduard Kummer , Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstraß , with whom he received his doctorate in 1879 ( De aequatione algebraica, quae est inter duas variabiles, in quandam formam canonicam transformata ). From 1874 he was assistant at the Prussian State Library , became curator in 1884, librarian in 1893, chief librarian in 1894 and its director in 1908. In 1920 he retired.

From 1884 onwards, Valentin put together a collection of around 150,000 catalog slips for a planned bibliography of all mathematical works that had appeared before 1900. It contained information on around 200,000 mathematical works. He worked on it until his death (the Prussian State Library made his own room available to him after his retirement) and planned to publish it in six volumes. He financed the work on it - including trips to foreign libraries - with considerable funds of his own. There was no publisher for the publication and there was also a lack of financial resources. After his death, Arthur Schoenflies looked through the collection. Schoenflies advocated the printing of the first volume, which was almost ready for printing, and the review of the other volumes for literature printed before 1870 (which he himself did before his death), since after that, in Schoenflies' view, the yearbook on the progress of mathematics listed literature. The catalog remained in the Prussian State Library and burned with other holdings in the library in 1944 after a bomb attack.

In 1885, 1900 and 1911 Valentin reported on the status of his bibliography in the mathematics-historical journal Bibliotheca Mathematica . He published a bibliography on women in the exact sciences and published on Leonhard Euler in Berlin (so he located his house at Behrensstrasse 21).

The speaker of the review of Archibald's obituary at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna in the Yearbook on the Progress of Mathematics (Volume 58, 1933, pp. 44-45), in contrast to Schoenflies, advocated a complete publication, but estimated another publication Several years of processing time, for example for a better structure and order.

In 1880 he married Käthe Hirsch, the daughter of the medical professor August Hirsch . With her he had five daughters.

literature

• RC Archibald: Georg Hermann Valentin (1848–1926). Atti Congresso Internazionale dei Matematici, Bologna, Volume 6, 1928, Zanichelli, pp. 465-472.

Web links

• To Valentin at DML

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Joris Vorstius: Results and Advances in Bibliography in Germany since the First World War . Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1948, p. 130.
2. ^ Archibald: Int. Congress Math.Bologna, Volume 6, p. 466
3. ↑ According to Archibald, Int. Congress Math. 1928, with his own funds equivalent to around $ 10,000, funds equivalent to around $ 2,300 he received over time from the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Support came from a recommendation from Weierstrass in 1886.
4. ^ Rudolf Fritsch , Gerda Fritsch: Approaches to a scientific biography of Arthur Schoenflies (1853-1928) . In: Menso Folkerts, Stefan Kirschner, Theodor Schmidt-Kaler (eds.): Florilegium astronomicum. Festschrift for Felix Schmeidler . Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89241-038-0 , pp. 141–186, here p. 155.
5. ↑ Valentin: Women in the exact sciences. Bibliotheca Mathematica, Volume 9, 1895, pp. 65-76.
6. ^ Valentin: Leonhard Euler's house in Berlin. Annual report DMV, Volume 15, 1906, pp. 270–271.
7. ^ Valentin: Leonhard Euler in Berlin. Treatises on the history of mathematical sciences, Issue 25, 1907, pp. 1–20.