August Ferdinand Möbius

August Ferdinand Möbius ( born November 17 1790 in Schulpforte; † September 26, 1868 in Leipzig ) was a German mathematician and astronomer at the University of Leipzig.

Family

His father Johann Heinrich Möbius was a dance teacher in the school gate (formerly Schulpforta ). He died three years after the birth of August Ferdinand. The mother was a descendant of Martin Luther.

1820 Mobius married Dorothea Christiane Juliane Rothe ( born April 26, 1790 in Gera, † September 9, 1859 in Leipzig). The two had a daughter, Emilie Auguste (1822-1897) and two sons: August Theodor (1821-1890) and Paul Heinrich August ( 1825-1889 ). The daughter married in 1851 the astronomer Heinrich Louis d'Arrest.

Life

Möbius visited by residents in its birthplace, traditional country Pforta, where he took the Abitur. He first studied law before he turned to 1814 in the second semester of 1809 studying mathematics at the University of Leipzig. He received his Ph.D. from Johann Friedrich Pfaff with the topic De computandis occultationibus fixarum by planetas so on calculation methods for occultations of fixed stars by planets. In 1815 he habilitated with astronomical work. A year later he was promoted to associate professor and Observer of the Leipzig Observatory, on the recommendation of Carl Friedrich Gauss, was appointed. To the director of the observatory, he was appointed in 1848.

Services

Mobius has written numerous essays and extensive writings on astronomy, geometry and statics. He made valuable contributions to analytic geometry, including the introduction of homogeneous coordinates and the duality principle. He pioneered the topology.

In 1846 he was one of the founders of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences.

Writings

His most important works dealing with the study of the interactions between the geometry and mechanics:

• The barycentrische Calcül: a new tool for the analytical treatment of geometry. Leipzig ( 1827)
• Textbook of statics. 2 vols Leipzig ( 1837)
• The elements of celestial mechanics. Leipzig ( 1843)

He was also in numerous smaller articles to the development of various areas of mathematics. According to him, inter alia, the Möbius geometry, the Möbius function, the Möbius transform and the Möbius strip are named. A lunar crater is named after him.