Charles Hermite

Charles Hermite ( born December 24, 1822 in Dieuze (Lorraine ); † January 14, 1901 in Paris) was a French mathematician.

Life

Hermite left as a student the École Polytechnique in the dispute, after stringent conditions were imposed on him because of inadequate performance. In the following years it developed on its own, in the exchanges, particularly with Joseph Liouville, to a productive mathematician. In 1848 he was a lecturer in 1869 professor at the École Polytechnique; 1876 ​​to 1897 he taught only at the Sorbonne. In 1856 he was elected to the Académie des Sciences, 1883 to the Roman Accademia dei Lincei.

Hermite was in close exchange with Joseph Liouville, Charles- François Sturm and Augustin Louis Cauchy; were among his pupils Gösta Mittag-Leffler, Jacques Hadamard and Henri Poincaré. For the latter he was even doctoral father; He married the sister of Joseph Bertrand and was father of Émile Picard.

Work

Hermite worked in number theory and algebra, via orthogonal polynomials and elliptic functions. He achieved important results on doubly periodic functions and invariants of quadratic forms. In 1858, he sparked an algebraic equation of the fifth degree by means of elliptic functions.

In 1873 he scored probably his most famous result: He proved that the Euler number e is transcendental; Based on Hermite's method proved Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann in 1882 the transcendence of the circle number π (impossibility of squaring the circle ).

Eponyms

After Hermite following mathematical structures are named:

• Hermitian differential equation, a linear ordinary differential equation of second order
• Hermitian form, a bilinear form which is linear in the first semi -linear in the second argument and complex symmetric
• Hermitian function, a sequence of functions, resulting from the multiplication of the polynomials with the hermetic normal distribution
• Hermite interpolation, a method for polynomial interpolation that takes into account also leads to the interpolating function
• Hermitian conjugate (also Hermitian adjoint ), the adjoint of a matrix
• Hermitian matrix, a complex square matrix, which coincides with its adjoint
• Hermitian manifold, a complex Riemannian manifold with a Hermitian metric
• Hermite normal form, one step form for integer matrices
• Hermitian operator, a term that is used differently, usually for a symmetric operator, a self-adjoint operator or a substantially self-adjoint operator
• Hermitian polynomial, a series of polynomials which represent the solution of the differential equation Hermitian

Furthermore, it is named after Hermite:

• ( 24998 ) Hermite, an asteroid of the main belt

Quote

" Je me détourné avec de cette horreur et effroi plaie lamentable des fonctions qui Continues n'ont point de dérivées ... »

" With horror and terror I turn off pitiful of this plague of continuous functions that have no leads ... "