Elwin Bruno Christoffel

Elwin Bruno Christoffel ( born November 10, 1829 in Monschau Montjoie today at Aachen, † March 15, 1900 in Strasbourg ) was a German mathematician.

Life

Elwin Bruno Christoffel attended the Jesuit College in Cologne, studied at the University of Berlin - including Peter Gustav Dirichlet - and received his doctorate in 1856 with a thesis on the movement of electricity in homogeneous bodies. He then returned to Montjoie, today Monschau, and lived there for three years in academic seclusion. 1859 Christoffel was a lecturer at the University of Berlin. The Zurich Polytechnic took him three years later as a successor to Richard Dedekind in Switzerland. He was decisive role in the establishment of the mathematical school at the Polytechnic. After a new job in Berlin at the Commercial Academy Christoffel in 1872 professor at the University of Strasbourg. In 1894 he retired.

Work

Christoffel dealt with conformal mapping and potential theory, the Riemann θ - function, with the theory of invariants, with tensor analysis, areas of mathematical physics and geodesy as well as with sound waves (shock waves).

His Reduktionstheorem solve the local equivalence problem for quadratic differential forms.

Effect

After Elwin Bruno Christoffel Christoffel symbols are named, who attended in the tensor analysis for a clear presentation and still be used. He also developed the Black - Christoffel transformation for mapping complicated mathematical areas of circles.

Others

The Elwin Christoffel - secondary school in Monschau was named after him.