Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig

Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig ( born November 8, 1743 Gartz ( Oder) ( Pomerania ), † September 10, 1831 in Braunschweig ) was a German mathematician and scientist.

Life

After his 1763 started studying mathematics and the natural sciences in Frankfurt / Oder, he accompanied the brunswick between Prince William Adolf ( † 1770) on a trip to southern Russia. After his death Hellwig lived in Brunswick, where he taught mathematics at the high school and Martineum Katharineum.

At the University of Helmstedt, he became the Dr. phil. doctorate. In 1790 he was appointed professor in 1802 and councilor. He taught from 1803 to 1831 as a professor of mathematics and science at the Collegium Carolinum, which was converted from 1809 to 1814 in the meantime in a military academy. He worked in the fields of Entomology ( Entomology ) and mineralogy, and especially mathematics.

Hellwig was a teacher and promoter of the later working in Berlin entomologist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger ( 1775-1813 ). Your insect collections formed the basis for the collection at the University of Berlin.

His students also Carl Friedrich Gauss and Johann Centurius listed by Hoffmannsegg.

On the basis of probability theory Hellwig founded a Sterbecassen Institute and the widow Braunschweigische general fund, which received later in the Public Insurance Braunschweig. For this he developed mathematical tables for graded according to age contribution rates, which he prepared the now common form of life insurance.

In addition, Hellwig was an inventor of a chess -like strategy game that was printed in Leipzig in 1780 and at that time was very popular.

His son Friedrich von Hellwig was a Prussian officer in the wars of liberation.