Wilhelm Jordan (geodesist)

Wilhelm Jordan (* March 1, 1842 in Ellwangen, Württemberg, † April 17, 1899 in Hannover ) was a German surveyor. He founded the Department of Surveying (now Geodesy and Geoinformatics ) at the University of Hanover and the multi-volume Handbook of surveying.

Training

Born as the son of the Judicial Council Wilhelm Friedrich Jordan and Julie born Glock, he lost his parents at the age of 10. After the high schools in Stuttgart, Ulm, and Esslingen he finished 1858-63 at Stuttgart Polytechnic courses for the civil engineer and surveyor (field measurement) and jurisprudence and three humanities subjects and took off two service examinations to be Repetent and assistant professor at Polytechnic Stuttgart. His dissertation was the trigonometric height measurement and its adjustment to the topic.

Professor and scientist

As early as 1868 he became a professor at the newly created Department of Practical Geometry and Advanced Geodesy of the Stuttgart Polytechnic, married Bertha Osiander, began construction of its first single-family home and worked on behalf of the Royal Prussian Rhineland GeodätischenInstituts the degree measurement triangulation.

In 1871 he was Baden Commissar at the Vienna Conference of European arc measurement in Vienna, 1873 Editor of the Journal of Geodesy and taught until 1881 in Karlsruhe ( until 1881 ), where in 1873 his first Handbook of Practical Geometry ( 1873) appeared. In 1874 he took part in the Libyenexpedition by Gerhard Rohlfs, of which he brought with him many photogrammetric measuring table and recordings of oases.

Mentor and publicist of the German geodesy

As a leading member of the company founded in 1871 German geometer Corporation (now German Association of Surveying ) he was involved in the 1870s instrumental in the restructuring of the geodetic education in Germany. The first issue of its widespread logarithms and later Geodetic Hülfstafeln (13 in total ) is likely to fall into this time.

1877 Jordan founded the calendar of Surveying and Rural Engineering, providing an overview of the world of surveying took a year and even after his death until 1949 appeared regularly. In 1880 he was an adjunct for five years a member of the Imperial Normal Eichungskommission and edited a 200- km-long major project of the Baden precision leveling.

From 1881 he taught as a professor of geodesy and practical geometry at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover, but was sidelined in the following year due to severe depression. In the years 1886-1894 he led them through the triangulation of the urban areas of Hanover and Linden. In Hanover, he also began work on his masterpiece, under the title Jordan Eggert Kneissl today is known Manual of Surveying. After his death the work was continued by his successor in Hannover, Carl Reinhertz and enhanced by Otto Eggert on further volumes

Wilhelm Jordan's Tomb, an obelisk found on the mansions cemetery.

According to Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Jordan of Gauss-Jordan algorithm is named.