Hans Ulrich Vitalis Pfaff

Hans Ulrich Vitalis Pfaff (born April 29, 1824 in Erlangen ; † May 20, 1872 ibid) was a German mathematician and professor at the University of Erlangen . He belongs to a dynasty of university professors in mathematics and science.

His parents were Wilhelm Andreas Pfaff , professor of mathematics and astronomy in Erlangen, and his second wife Luise Pfaff nee Plank. His uncle Johann Friedrich Pfaff was a mathematician at the University of Helmstedt and the doctoral supervisor of Carl Friedrich Gauß . Of his three siblings, Alexius Friedrich (1825–1886) was also a well-known scientist.

After Latin school and high school, Pfaff studied philosophy , mathematics and natural sciences in Erlangen from 1841 and in Berlin from 1843 . During his studies, he became a member of the Bubenreuther Erlangen fraternity in the winter semester of 1841/42 . In 1847 he became a teacher and later director at the trade school in Nördlingen (Bavarian Swabia). During this time his sister Pauline (1827–1907) ran the household for him; She also met her husband Karl Brater , the local mayor, in Nördlingen . Pfaff's brother-in-law had to give up the office in Nördlingen in 1851, and Pfaff also changed positions. From 1851 to 1869 he taught mathematics and physics at the agricultural and trade school in Erlangen. In 1855 he completed his habilitation at the University of Erlangen and became an associate professor in 1867 and professor of mathematics in 1869 , but died three years later.

The main area of work in this short time - at the same chair as his father 40 years earlier - was projective geometry , about which his two-volume textbook Newer Geometry was published in Erlangen in 1867 . It was reissued in the USA in 2006.

Pfaff was married to Agnes Therese Heloise Adelaide Freiin von Ditfurth, who gave him four children, but died early. Even before Pfaff's death in 1872, his sister Pauline had taken over his housekeeping in Erlangen again, while her husband was mostly on political trips before he died in 1869. Since then, the widow has looked after the orphaned children and, due to lack of money, took on carpenters, including a. PhD students of the mathematician Felix Klein .

Pauline's daughter, the poet Agnes Sapper (1852–1929), took her uncle as a model for the music teacher Pfäffling ( The Pfäffling family and becoming and growing of the Pfäffling children ) in her youth novels .

Individual evidence

↑ Ernst Höhne: The Bubenreuther. History of a German fraternity. II., Erlangen 1936, p. 150.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Pfaff, Hans Ulrich Vitalis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German mathematician and professor at the University of Erlangen
DATE OF BIRTH	April 29, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH	gain
DATE OF DEATH	May 20, 1872
Place of death	gain

[1] Ernst Höhne: The Bubenreuther. History of a German fraternity. II., Erlangen 1936, p. 150.