Franz Taurinus

Franz Adolph taurinus (* November 15, 1794 in Bad König, † February 13th 1874 in Cologne ) was a German mathematician who did preparatory work for non-Euclidean geometry.

Life and work

Franz taurinus was the son of a court official of the Counts of Erbach- Schöneberg. He studied in Heidelberg, Giessen and Göttingen law, but could thanks to a heritage in Cologne lead the life of a scholar. With his uncle Ferdinand Karl Schweikart (1780-1859), the law professor in Königsberg was, he corresponded among other things, mathematics. S he began to Euclid's parallel postulate to care, which was always found to be exceptional among the axioms of Euclid. Already Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri and Johann Heinrich Lambert models examined the geometry in which it is not considered to find contradictions, and also Schweikart examined these new geometries (of him " astral Size doctrine " called, publication 1807). Taurinus examined the implied Lambert model of the geometry on a " ball " of imaginary radius that he ( now called hyperbolic geometry) " log- spherical" called. He was finally convinced that no inconsistencies can be found, and published in 1825 in Cologne, his theory of parallel lines and 1826 Geometriae prima elementa. He eventually identified three types of geometries, Euclidean, spherical ( for he saw the great circles on the sphere as a model ) and the hyperbolic. He remained convinced of the special role of Euclidean geometry. According to Zacharias he is indeed the founder of non-Euclidean trigonometry, but not to be expected to the actual founders of non-Euclidean geometry as Nikolai Lobachevsky and János Bolyai ..

About his ideas, he also corresponded with Carl Friedrich Gauss (as well as before Schweikart ) 1824. Gauss encouraged taurinus and commented extensively on his own experiments, but also admonished him publicly not to quote him. As Taurinus later sent his works to Gauss, this did not answer. After Stäckel he was probably angry that Taurinus but quoted him in the prefaces of his books ..