Heinrich Kühn (mathematician)

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Heinrich Kühn (born November 19, 1690 in Königsberg , † October 8, 1769 in Danzig ) was a German mathematician and scientist .

Life

From 1707 he studied at the University of Halle , where he received his doctorate in law on March 18, 1717 . On June 27, 1735 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the Academic Gymnasium Danzig .

On January 2nd, 1743 he founded the Natural Research Society in Danzig with Jacob Theodor Klein , Daniel Gralath the Elder and Michael Christoph Hanow and five others .

At that time Kühn was already known beyond the borders of Germany. He belonged to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences as a foreign member. The best-known literary work by Kühn is his work "Meditatioines de origene fonditurm", published in 1740, which deals with the theory of groundwater flow and springs.

His first publications were in the fields of physics, physical geography and astronomy. In Danzig Kühn developed a lively and long-term scientific activity. From 1735 to 1770 he was the publisher and author of the Danzig house and history calendar.

For his work “Sensible Thoughts on the Origin of Sources and Groundwater” he received the Prize of the Society of Sciences in Bordeaux in 1741; it was printed five years later in Latin, German and French. For this work he received a prize from the Societät von Bordeaux in 1741. The book was published in French and Latin. In the field of mathematics, he was the first to teach the geometric representation of imaginary quantities from 1750 to 1751, which later became common scientific knowledge through Carl Friedrich Gauß . Another important publication in the field of higher mathematics appeared posthumously in 1771 under the title "Tentamen de Aequationibus cubicis quibuscumque perfect resolvendis". With his work on groundwater flow, Kühn is a pioneer in the field of groundwater hydraulics. Georg Agrikola , 1549, and Johannes Kepler , 1619 already wrote works on groundwater coverage, but it was only the theory put forward by Kühn that formed the basis for later scientific investigations in the field of hydrogeology .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Continuation and additions, Christian Gottlieb Joechers, Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexikon, p. 937
  2. ↑ Erwin Marquardt (hydraulic engineer) , About the historical foundations of our water management. German Water Management Volume 23, 1928, pp. 35–47 A. Precht, Senior Senate Councilor i. R. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Rudolf Tillmann + Osterreichische Ingenieur-Zeitschrift., 1st year, No. 5, pp. 333–334; [1] ; [2] ; [3] p. 373
personal data
SURNAME Kühn, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician and scientist
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1690
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1769
Place of death Danzig