Christoph Gudermann

Christoph Gudermann ( born March 25, 1798 in Vienenburg, † September 25, 1852 in Münster ( Westphalia ) ) was a German mathematician; according to him the Gudermann function is named.

Life

Christoph Gudermann was the son of a school teacher and, after studying at the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin by the state exam as a teacher in 1822 in Berlin, also a teacher. His doctoral supervisor at the university was Carl Friedrich Gauss.

He was first in 1823 teacher at the high school in Kleve. In 1832 he became an associate professor of mathematics and in 1839 full professor at the Theological and Philosophical Academy in Münster (later University ). During this time he taught Karl Weierstrass elliptic functions, among others, in (1839 /40); This subject matter has been before and never held in any other institution. Karl Weierstrass was heavily influenced by this lecture, so that he even inquired further in this direction.

Gudermann never got the fame for his research on spherical geometry ( geometry of the sphere) and special functions ( elliptic and hyperbolic functions), as he too specialized in individual cases and not published so many works on the subject. Moritz Cantor mentioned as another reason his habit throughout his treatment of elliptic functions to introduce their own new names that were not otherwise in use. He also called him a deep thinker on his work areas. He made a name for himself first by a book on Spherical geometry of 1830, which earned him a promotion to senior teacher and soon after the professorship. He saw the plane geometry as a special case ( sphere with infinite radius ) of the spherical geometry and cleared the geometry on the sphere is therefore a priority.

In his book on Spherical geometry of 1830 there is also the set of ground Miller ( the three circles on the diagonals of a complete quadrilateral intersect at two points ) with a reference to the author of soil Miller, about whom nothing else is known.

One of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology conferred by students for excellence in teaching award is named after him.