Gustav Ferdinand Mehler

Gustav Ferdinand Mehler (born December 13, 1835 in Schönlanke , †  July 13, 1895 in Elbing ) was a German mathematician .

Mehler was born as the son of the court director in Schönlanke, first attended the local secondary school and then, when his father was transferred to Bromberg in 1847 , the local high school , which he successfully completed in 1852.

Mehler continued his studies in Breslau and Berlin . Here he was mainly influenced by Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet . After passing the state examination well, on April 1, 1858, he became a member of the mathematical seminar that existed at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin and was headed by Karl Heinrich Schellbach .

After Mehler had been a few assistant teachers at various high schools, he was finally employed at the Gymnasium in Fraustadt at Easter 1859 . In 1863 went to the St. Johann secondary school in Danzig , and then in 1868 he moved to Elbing , where he worked until his death.

In 1868 Mehler received the rare distinction that the Breslau philosophical faculty made him an honoris causa doctor philosophiae, as it says in the diploma: "cum de gymnasiorum juventute ad matheseos cognitionem formanda et excolenda tum vero de litteris mathematicis augendis promovendisque praeclaro merito" .

Mehler's work extended in two directions: firstly, they served the purposes of teaching, and secondly, they were of a purely scientific nature.

His textbook Hauptsatz der Elementar-Mathematik , which he wrote at Schellbach's suggestion and which has appeared in many editions, appeared for the first time in 1859 .

In his scientific work Mehler shows himself to be a student of Dirichlet. His main fields of activity were the theory of definite integrals with their applications to potential theory , the representation of general functions with the help of certain elementary functions and related problems in electricity theory .

His work on electricity distribution was of particular importance. Here Mehler introduces a new type of function, the cone function, because he comes to them through the problem of electricity distribution on a hemispherical surface that ends at its apex. He examined these functions in various directions, especially their relationship with the spherical functions .

Mehler was not married, but lived in a household with his two sisters. He is considered a humble and thorough scientist.

literature

• M. Krause, Gustav Ferdinand Mehler , Mathematischen Annalen, Volume 48, pp. 603-606, 1897.