Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

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Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet ([ ləˈʒœn diʀiˈkleː ] or [ ləˈʒœn diʀiˈʃleː ]; * February 13, 1805 in Düren , †  May 5, 1859 in Göttingen ) was a German mathematician .

Dirichlet taught in Berlin and Göttingen and worked mainly in the fields of analysis and number theory .

Life

Dirichlet's grandfather came from Verviers (now Belgium , then the Principality of Liège ) and moved to Düren, where he married a daughter of a Düren family. The grandfather's father was the first to wear the name Lejeune Dirichlet ("the young Dirichlet") to distinguish it from his father , the name Dirichlet originated from Le jeune de Richelette ("the boy from Richelette") after a small, now Belgian town, whereupon the pronunciation [ ləˈʒœn diʀiˈʃleː ] is based.

When he was twelve, Dirichlet first attended what is now called the Beethoven Gymnasium in Bonn . During this time he was looked after by Peter Joseph Elvenich , an acquaintance of the Dirichlet family. Two years later he moved to the Marzellen-Gymnasium in Cologne, where he was taught from 1819 to 1821 by Georg Simon Ohm , among others . In May 1822 he began studying mathematics in Paris , where he met the most important French mathematicians of the time - including Biot , Fourier , Francoeur , Hachette , Laplace , Lacroix , Legendre and Poisson .

In 1825 he first drew attention to himself by proving Fermat's conjecture for the special case n = 5 together with Adrien-Marie Legendre : There is no nontrivial integral solution of the equation for . Later he provided a proof for the special case n = 14.

In 1827 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bonn and completed his habilitation in 1827 - on the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt - as a private lecturer at the University of Breslau . In 1828 Alexander von Humboldt moved him to Berlin. Here he first taught at the general war school , and later he taught at the building academy. In 1829 he became a private lecturer, in 1831 associate professor and in 1839 full professor of mathematics at the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms University . In 1832 he was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . Since 1833 he was a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and since 1837 of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg .

Excerpt from the family tree of the Mendelssohn family with dirichlet on the wall of the permanent exhibition in the former chapel on the Trinity Cemetery I in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Dirichlet married Rebecka Henriette Mendelssohn on May 22, 1832 , a sister of the composer Fanny Hensel and the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . A son of the couple was the farmer Walter Lejeune Dirichlet , a great-grandson of the philosopher Leonard Nelson .

He had been a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences since 1846 and a full member since 1855 . He was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 1854. In 1855 he took over from Carl Friedrich Gauß as a professor of higher mathematics in Göttingen . He held this position until the end of his life in 1859.

Dirichlet researched mainly in the areas of partial differential equations , definite integrals and number theory . He linked the previously separate areas of number theory and analysis. Dirichlet series are named after him as a generalization of the beta function. He gave criteria for the convergence of Fourier series and proved the existence of an infinite number of prime numbers in arithmetic progressions, in which the first term is relatively prime to the difference between successive terms. The Dirichlet set of units of units in algebraic number fields is named after him . His new kind of considerations on potential theory were later used and further developed by Bernhard Riemann . He also dealt with mathematical physics (including equilibrium figures of rotating liquids). The variation principle named after Dirichlet was later used by Ray William Clough (1920–2016) to lay the foundations for the finite element method (FEM). His lectures on number theory were edited by Richard Dedekind after his death and had a famous appendix of his own. Dirichlet was known in his time for the rigor of his evidence (according to the circumstances at the time). Carl Gustav Jacobi wrote in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt on December 21, 1846: If Gauss says he has proven something, it is very likely to me that when Cauchy says it is as much for as against to bet when Dirichlet says it, it is certain .

Burial place of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

In addition to Dedekind, his students also included Bernhard Riemann , Gotthold Eisenstein , Rudolf Lipschitz and Hans Sommer .

The violinist Joseph Joachim and Agathe von Siebold, Brahms's temporary fiancée, performed in Dirichlet's house in Göttingen . Karl August Varnhagen von Ense from Berlin visited him there and described the house, the garden and its pavilion in his diaries.

Dirichlet was buried in the Bartholomäusfriedhof in Göttingen.

At Weierstraße 11 in Düren, where Dirichlet was born, a plaque commemorates Dirichlet. The Dirichletweg in Düren is named after him.

Processes that go back to Dirichlet or are named after him

Works

Issued posthumously

Honors

Is named after the plant genus Dirichlet Dirichletia Klotzsch from the family of the redness plants (Rubiaceae). In 1970 a moon crater was named after him and in 1999 the asteroid (11665) Dirichlet was named after him.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut de Boor , Hugo Moser, Christian Winkler (eds.): Siebs: Deutsche Hochsprache. Stage discussion , de Gruyter, Berlin 1957, p. 270
  2. ↑ "Dirikläh" called himself Dirichlet; see Helmut Koch , Jürg Kramer : Mathematics until 1890 in Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (ed.): History of the University of Unter den Linden 1810-2010 . Volume 4, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004669-3 , p. 468
  3. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon . Volume 5. Leipzig 1895, p. 27
  4. ↑ Dirichlet . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 5, Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig / Vienna 1906, p.  42 .
  5. ^ Elstrodt: The Life and Work of Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805-1859) . (PDF; 331 kB) 2007, p. 2
  6. ^ Martin Schwarzbach: Cologne high school graduates - later naturalists . In: Martin Schwarzbach (Hrsg.): Natural sciences and natural scientists in Cologne between the old and the new university (1798-1919) . Böhlau, Cologne 1985, p. 106 .
  7. ^ Members of the previous academies. Gustav (Johann Peter Gustav) Lejeune Dirichlet. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 15, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Hans-Günter Klein: The Mendelssohn family. Family tree from Moses Mendelssohn to the seventh generation (2nd edition), Staatsbibliothek Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 2007, p. 19
  9. ↑ The engagement took place in November 1831, see Elstrodt: The Life and Work of Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805-1859) (PDF; 331 kB) , 2007, p. 13.
  10. ↑ 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. 148.
  11. ↑ Member entry of Gustav Dirichlet at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on November 7, 2019.
  12. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2018, pp. 888ff., ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  13. ^ Dieudonné (ed.), History of Mathematics, Vieweg 1990, p. 389
  14. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  15. ↑ Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
  16. ↑ Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet at the IAU Minor Planet Center (English)
personal data
SURNAME Dirichlet, Peter Gustav Lejeune
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lejeune Dirichlet, Johann Peter Gustav (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Düren
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1859
Place of death Goettingen