Magnus Georg Paucker

Magnus Georg Paucker, also Magnus Georg von Paucker, Russian Магнус Георг фон Паукер, (* November 26, 1787 in Simuna, Estonia; † August 31, 1855 in Jelgava ) was a Baltic astronomer and mathematician.

Paucker was the son of a Country Priest Johann Heinrich Paucker and studied from 1805 Astronomy, Physics and Mechanics at the University of Dorpat at Georg Friedrich Parrot and Johann Wilhelm Andreas Pfaff. In 1808 he surveyed the course of Embach in Livonia geodetic and 1809, he was after finishing his studies in the construction of optical telegraph line between Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo involved. After a short time as a senior teacher of Mathematics in Vyborg he was 1811 Observer at the Observatory at Dorpat ( as successor to Ernst Friedrich Christoph Knorre, who died in 1810) and held at the city's university lectures. In 1813 he earned his doctorate under John Sigismund Gottfried Huth ( De nova explicatione phaenomeni elasticitatis corporum rigidorum, on elasticity theory ), but an associate professor of mathematics at Dorpat had already become. In August of the same year he gave up his university career on ( after he was appointed as assistant to the observatory in favor of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which was also his doctorate in 1813 at Huth, ignored ) and was head teacher of mathematics and physics at the high school in Jelgava. The school had an extensive library and a small observatory. He remained there the rest of his career in 1818 and rejected a reputation as a professor of astronomy to Dorpat from. Paucker published numerous essays and renounced his position as a high school teacher in 1845 to devote himself entirely to research in mathematics, astronomy, metrology and other areas.

He corresponded with Carl Friedrich Gauss and published in 1822 a construction of the regular 257 -gon by ruler and compass, a construction in accordance with the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae of Gauss is possible. The Jacobian student Friedrich Julius Richelot published in 1832 also a construction.

In 1832 he received the first Demidov Prize for his book Handbook of Metrology of Russia and its German provinces.

He was a founder (1815 ) and Permanent Secretary of the Courland Society for Science and the Arts. In 1831 he was offered full membership in the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but he refused because he wanted to stay in Jelgava.

Writings

• Geometric distortion of the regular seventeen -gon and Zweyhundersiebenundfünfzig -gon in the circle, annual negotiations of Courland Society of Literature and Art, Volume 2, 1822, pp. 160-219 (online)
• The planar geometry of the straight line and the circle or the elements, First Book, Königsberg 1828
• Mémoire pour la construction géometrique of équations du troisième et sur ​​les degré propriétés principales de ces équations, demontrées par la géométrie ELEMENTAIRE, Mémoires de l' Académie des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, Volume 10, 1846, pp. 158-266
• Metrology of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Dorpat yearbooks for literature, Statistics and Arts, Volume 5, 1835, pp. 177-217
• The Maaße and weights of Russia and its provinces, Schumacher 's Yearbook 1836, 1837
• Foundations of geometry, Part I to IV, Jelgava 1842, Part V to VIII, Leipzig 1842
• The Gaussian equations of the arc triangle and two strange phrases from space, Jelgava 1844
• The image theory, Leipzig 1846