Alexander von Brill

Alexander Wilhelm von Brill (originally: Alexander Brill, born September 20, 1842 in Darmstadt, † June 8, 1935 in Tübingen ) was a German mathematician.

Life and work

Brill was the son of book-printing - owner Konrad Heinrich Brill ( 1808-91 ) and his wife Julie Henriette born in Vienna ( 1820-1903 ). After the visit of the Darmstadt school, he studied from 1860 Architecture and Mathematics ( with Alfred Clebsch ) at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where his uncle Christian Wiener was professor of descriptive geometry. He made in 1863 a degree in architecture and the Magisterium exam in mathematics. In 1863 he followed Clebsch to the University of Giessen, where he received his doctorate in 1864 and his habilitation in 1867. In between, he was 1865/6 in Berlin, where he studied under Karl Weierstrass, Ernst Eduard Kummer and Leopold Kronecker. As in Giessen, he financed it by a substitute teacher activities and private lessons. After that, he was a lecturer in Giessen ( where Paul Gordan associate professor, was Clebsch went to Göttingen in 1868 ) and from 1869 professor at the TH Darmstadt. In 1875 he became a professor at the Technical University of Munich, where from 1875 to 1880 Felix Klein was also his colleague. As Klein was a dedicated teacher Brill, put the emphasis on clarity. He designed ( as a trained architect ) itself mathematical models and built it himself also to their students counted in Munich Adolf Hurwitz, Walther von Dyck, Carl Runge, Max Planck, Charles Rohn, Luigi Bianchi, Gregorio Ricci - Curbastro. 1884 Brill became a full professor at the University of Tübingen, where he was rector in 1896 bsi 1897. where he retired in 1919. There he worked partly together with Hermann of steel, which he brought to Tübingen.

Brill worked on algebraic geometry. In 1874 he studied with Max Noether the function body of algebraic curves and proved therein, inter alia, the theorem of Riemann -Roch ( Mathematische Annalen Bd.7, p.269 -310 ) with algebraic methods. Their common major survey work from 1894 in the annual report of the German Mathematical Society about the history of the theory of algebraic curves became known. The work of Brill and Noether was the beginning of the treatment of algebraic geometry by purely algebraic methods. Your work shone especially to Italy, where a strong school of algebraic geometry to Enriques, Severi and Castelnuovo arose.

Further research focused on algebraic correspondences ( Cayley - Brill correspondence principle ) and algebraic space curves. He was also involved in mathematical physics, eg with the mechanics of Heinrich Hertz and the principle of relativity of Einstein. Brill even published the second oldest textbook on the theory of relativity ( based on a book by Max von Laue 1911) in 1912. He was also greatly interested in the history of mathematics and occupied himself with the works of Johannes Kepler (via appeared his last release in 1930 ). His students Max Caspar (1880-1956) and Walther von Dyck were responsible for the work output of Kepler in Munich.

He was, inter alia, Member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He was an honorary member (1927 ) and in 1907 chairman of the German Mathematical Society (DMV). Alexander von Brill in 1897 was awarded the Cross of Honor of the Order of the Württemberg Crown, which was connected with the personal titles of nobility. 1920-1925 Brill was chairman of the Württemberg Society for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina (Halle), Göttingen Society of Sciences.

Brill had been married since 1875, née Anna Schleiermacher ( 1848-1952 ) and had three sons and a daughter. Among them were the future president of the Reich Office balancing Alexander Brill, Prof. Edward Brill and producer August Brill.

Writings

  • Lectures on algebraic plane curves and functions. In 1925.
  • Lectures on general mechanics. 1928.
  • Introductory lectures on the mechanics bulky masses., 1909.
  • Graphical representations from the pure and applied mathematics. In 1894.
  • With Noether: About algebraic functions and their applications in geometry. Mitt Göttingen Akad.1873, and her eponymous articles in Mathematische Annalen Bd.7, 1874, Online
  • With Noether: The development of the theory of algebraic functions in ancient and modern times. DMV Annual Report 1894.
  • The principle of relativity. Teubner 1912.
  • About Kepler 's Astronomia nova. Stuttgart 1930.
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