Otto Spiess
Ludwig Otto Spiess (born March 1, 1878 in Basel ; † February 14, 1966 in Riehen ) was a Swiss mathematician , known for his research on Leonhard Euler and the Bernoulli family .
Life
On his mother's side, Spiess came from an old Basel family (Faesch) and studied at the University of Basel (doctorate on basic concepts of iteration calculation ) and the University of Berlin (with Hermann Amandus Schwarz , Friedrich Schottky , Ferdinand Georg Frobenius , Edmund Landau, among others ). He then became a private lecturer, associate professor in 1907 and full professor of mathematics in Basel in 1938. In addition, he taught mathematics at the Basel grammar school until 1915.
Spiess is best known for his research on Leonhard Euler and the Bernoulli family of mathematicians and physicists. He discovered significant archival material on Johann I Bernoulli , Johann II Bernoulli and Johann III Bernoulli in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and the ducal library in Gotha , which he was able to bring to Basel, where it is now in the university library and is a main source for the history of mathematics of the 17th and 18th centuries. He also started the Bernoulli edition of the collected works of the Bernoulli family of mathematicians, beginning with the extensive correspondence from Johann I. Bernoulli (over 4000 letters), which occupied him for over twenty years, so that the first volume was only published by Birkhäuser in 1955. He left his private fortune (among other things, he was an insurance advisor) to a foundation that supports the publication of the Bernoulli's works.
Fonts
- Leonhard Euler. A contribution to the intellectual history of the 18th century, Frauenfeld 1929.
- Johann Bernoulli , Daniel Bernoulli . In: Karl Rudolf Fueter : Great Swiss Researchers. 1939.
- The Bernoulli family of mathematicians . In: Great Swiss. 1938; as well as article Bernoulli, Basel family of scholars . In: New German Biography 1955.
- Basel in 1760 according to the diaries of the Hungarian Counts Joseph and Samuel Teleki . 1936.
literature
- Joseph W. Dauben , Christoph J. Scriba (Ed.): Writing the history of mathematics. Its historical development . Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 2002, ISBN 3-7643-6167-0 , ( Science networks 27), p. 526.
Web links
- Otto Spiess estate in the Basel University Library
- Erwin Neuenschwander: Otto Spiess. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Individual evidence
- ^ S. Gehr, F. Nagel, B. v. Reibnitz (ed.), Editions in Basel , 2010, pp. 22–23 (20–21)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Spiess, Otto |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Spiess, Ludwig Otto (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 1, 1878 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Basel |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 14, 1966 |
| Place of death | Riehen |