Wilhelm Ahrens (mathematician)

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Wilhelm Ahrens (born March 3, 1872 in Lübz , † May 23, 1927 in Rostock ; full name: Wilhelm Ernst Martin Georg Ahrens ) was a German mathematician and writer.

life and work

Ahrens was born in Lübz an der Elde in Mecklenburg and studied from 1890 to 1897 in Rostock , Berlin and Freiburg . In 1895 he received his doctorate from Otto Staude on the subject of a genre n-fold periodic functions of n real variables summa cum laude . At the same time he passed the senior teacher examination. From 1895 to 1896 he was a teacher at the German school in Antwerp and then studied another semester with Sophus Lie in Leipzig . Inspired by this, he wrote “About transformation groups, all of which subgroups are invariant” (Hamburger Math. Gesellschaft Volume 4, 1902). In 1897 he was a teacher in Magdeburg at the building trade school, from 1901 at the mechanical engineering school. In 1904 he moved back to Rostock to work entirely as a writer.

He worked a lot on the history of mathematics and on mathematical games ( entertainment mathematics ), on which he wrote a great deal and also contributed to the encyclopedia of mathematical sciences . Its great predecessors were Jacques Ozanam in France, where the number theorist Édouard Lucas (1842-1891) wrote similar books in the 19th century, and Walter William Rouse Ball (1850-1925) in England ( Mathematical recreations and essays 1892), Sam Loyd (1841–1901) in the USA and Ernest Dudeney (1857–1930) in England. In that sense Martin Gardner and Ian Stewart , editors of the mathematics column in Scientific American , and Raymond Smullyan can be considered his successors. He also published a book with quotes and anecdotes about mathematicians ( Joke and Seriousness in Mathematics ). He wrote numerous magazine articles.

Publications

  • Mathematical entertainments and games , Teubner, Leipzig 1901 ( gallica.bnf.fr digitized version ), 2nd edition 1910–1918 in 2 volumes
  • Math games. In: Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences. Volume 1, part 2, Teubner, Leipzig 1902, pp. 1080-1093 ( uni-goettingen.de digitized version ).
  • Scherz und Ernst in der Mathematik , Teubner, Leipzig 1904 ( historical.library.cornell.edu , also at archive.org with additional download options) - Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 2002.
  • Mathematical games (in the series From Nature and Spiritual World; Volume 170; abridged version of “Mathematical Entertainments and Games”), Leipzig, Teubner 1907, 4th edition 1919 - Reprint: Anaconda Verlag, 2008.
  • Scholars' anecdotes. Sack, Berlin-Schöneberg 1911.
  • The great king. From works and activities, sentences and anecdotes. Sack, Berlin-Schöneberg 1912.
  • Mathematicians anecdotes (= mathematical library; 18), Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin 1916, 2nd edition 1920.
  • The theater in the sun of humor. Cheerful pictures from the world of the stage and stage history. Sack, Berlin 1913.
  • Old and new from entertainment mathematics , Springer, Berlin 1918, doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-642-50946-9

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the first and second matriculation of Wilhelm Ahrens in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ Otto Staude : In memory of Dr. Wilhelm Ahrens . In: German Mathematicians Association (ed.): Annual report of the German Mathematicians Association . tape 37 . Teubner, 1928, ISSN  0012-0456 , p. 336 ( uni-goettingen.de - obituary, pp. 286–287).
  3. ^ Wilhelm Ahrens in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / name used
personal data
SURNAME Ahrens, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ahrens, Wilhelm Ernst Martin Georg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Luebz
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1927
Place of death Rostock