Nikolaus Fuss

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Nikolaus Fuss (also: Nikolaus Fuss , Nicolaus Fuss , Nicolas Fuss , Nikolai Fuss ); (Born January 30, 1755 in Basel , Switzerland ; † January 4, 1826 in Saint Petersburg , Russia ) was a Swiss mathematician and secretary to Leonhard Euler .

The son of the carpenter Johann Heinrich Fuss first completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter with his father and, at the same time, attended the official drawing school and the municipal grammar school. From 1767 to 1772 he studied mathematics at the University of Basel with Daniel Bernoulli .

In 1772 he followed Euler to Saint Petersburg after his blindness. He was Euler's secretary for over ten years and prepared about 250 papers for printing on his behalf. Later he was permanent conference secretary of the Petersburg Academy and tried among others to bring Carl Friedrich Gauss to the academy in Russia.

Fuss dealt with problems of actuarial mathematics and trigonometry . In 1778 he won a prize from the French Academy of Sciences . In 1793 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1802 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen and in 1808 of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1812 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Like other recognized mathematicians of his time, he did not recognize the genius of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky's geometry textbook in 1823 and wrote a negative opinion on it.

In 1784 he married Leonhard Euler's granddaughter Albertine († 1822), a daughter of Johann Albrecht Euler . The couple had 13 children, about half of whom survived. Several sons also embarked on an academic career in Russia: Paul Heinrich (* 1798; † January 10, 1855) was his successor in 1826 as mathematics professor and as secretary of the Academy in St. Petersburg. Georg Albert (1806–54) became an astronomer and, after various research trips, became head of the observatory in Wilna in 1848 .

In elementary geometry, the principle of Fuss , which describes a relationship between the incircle radius and the circumferential radius of a quadrilateral tendon tangent, is named after him.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Mumenthaler: Fuss, Niklaus. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . gives January 18 as the date of birth.
  2. ^ Stefan Hess / Wolfgang Loescher : Furniture in Basel. Art and craft of the carpenters until 1798, Basel 2012, p. 88.
  3. ^ Members of the previous academies. Nikolaus von Fuss. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 26, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 88.
  5. ↑ http://www.sgipt.org/biogr/matnat/lobat/Lobat.htm#Negative report on the textbook of geometry
  6. ^ Necrology. In:  The domestic. A weekly for Liv, Esthian and Curland history, geography, statistics and literature / The Inland. A weekly for Liv, E (h) st (h) and Curlands / Kurlands history, geography, statistics and lit (t) eratur , August 29, 1855, p. 7 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / inl
personal data
SURNAME Fuss, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Foot, Nicholas; Fuss, Niklaus; Fuss, Nicolaus; Fuss, Nicolas; Fuss, Nikolai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 1826
Place of death Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire