August Crelle

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August Leopold Crelle
Berlin memorial plaque on Potsdamer Strasse 172 in Berlin-Schöneberg
Street sign in Berlin-Schöneberg

August Leopold Crelle (born March 17, 1780 in Eichwerder (near Wriezen ), † October 6, 1855 in Berlin ) was a German mathematician , architect and engineer . He is particularly known as the founder of the journal for pure and applied mathematics , also known as "Crelles Journal" for short.

Life

Crelle acquired his knowledge by reading on her own without having attended school. He showed a special inclination for mathematics , later for political science . In 1803/04 he accompanied David Gilly on a three-month study trip to Paris . External conditions then made him take on the road construction specialist. After he had held several subordinate positions in the Prussian state building industry, he was later appointed to the secret senior building officer and member of the senior building management. Most of the artificial roads built in the Prussian state between 1816 and 1826 were built with his help, the Berlin-Potsdam Railway even according to his design.

In 1826 he founded the Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematics , also known as "Crelles Journal" for short, and was its editor. The Journal was the first major mathematical journal that was not affiliated with an academy, and the leading mathematical journal in the early 19th century. It still exists today. Right from the start, Crelle succeeded in winning important mathematicians such as the Berliners Jakob Steiner , Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet , Ernst Eduard Kummer , Carl Gustav Jacobi , Gotthold Eisenstein and especially Niels Henrik Abel as authors. With these he was able to establish himself successfully against the then predominant French magazines. Crelle itself became a fixture in the scientific and social life of Berlin.

Senior building officer since 1815, he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1828 . In 1834 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . In 1853 he became an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1849 he resigned from civil service for health reasons.

In memory of the mathematician and master builder, Crellestrasse in the Schöneberg district of Berlin - near the railway line he designed - has been named after him since 1958 .

As a mathematician he found new results in triangle geometry (1816) when he was considering the task of finding a point in the interior of the triangle whose connecting lines to the corners form equal partial angles with the sides. Proceeding from the same problem, the results of Henri Brocard were found again in France in 1875.

Works (selection)

  • Some remarks on the principles of the calculus of variations . In: Treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences. From the year 1833. Berlin 1835, pp. 1-40.

literature

Web links

Commons : August Crelle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Some of the web links given here name March 11th as the date of birth. But since Crelle's autobiographical curriculum vitae - also linked here - and the Berlin memorial plaque shown in the article name March 17th, this information is very likely to be correct.
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. August Leopold Crelle. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed September 24, 2015 (Russian, incorrect transliteration of name).
  3. ^ Member History: August L. Crelle. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 1, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Crellestrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Crelle, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crelle, August Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician, architect and engineer
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1780
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichwerder (near Wriezen )
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1855
Place of death Berlin