Carl Hierholzer

Carl Hierholzer ( born October 2, 1840 in Freiburg im Breisgau, † September 13, 1871 in Karlsruhe ) was a German mathematician.

Life

Hierholzer studied mathematics at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where he joined the fraternity Teutonia. He received his PhD on March 8, 1865 in Heidelberg at the Königsberg and the Königsberg mathematical school coming Otto Hesse ( 1811-1874 ). He habilitated in 1870 at the Polytechnic teaching with a dissertation About conics in space, which was also published in Mathematische Annalen, and was then a lecturer at the Polytechnic.

Posthumously published work about the opportunity to avoid a polyline without repetition and without interruption, which was written down from memory by Christian Vienna with the help of Jacob Lüroth in Karlsruhe in December 1871, and published in 1873. In it, the Euler - Hierholzer - proposition is proved. He is considered the first complete characterization of the Eulerian and semi- Eulerian graphs in graph theory. This is also why the eponymous algorithm, the algorithm of Hierholzer, with which one can determine an Euler circuit or an Eulerian path in an Eulerian or semi- Eulerian undirected graph.

Writings

• C. Hierholzer: About conics in space. Habilitation thesis to obtain the venia docendi the Grand Ducal Polytechnic to Karlsruhe. Mathematische Annalen II ( 1870), 564-586.
• C. Hierholzer: Over a surface of the fourth order. Mathematische Annalen IV (1871 ), 172-180.
• C. Hierholzer: On the way to avoid a polyline without repetition and without interruption. Mathematische Annalen VI (1873 ), 30-32.