Helge von Koch

Nils Fabian Helge von Koch ( pronunciation: [ ˌ ː hɛl gə fɔnkɔk ː ], born January 25, 1870 in Stockholm, † March 11, 1924 in Danderyd ) was a Swedish mathematician. He designed his namesake Koch curve, one of the first fractals, as an example of an infinitely long, differentiable at any point curve.

Life

Helge von Koch was born in 1870 as the son of the Swedish officer and writer Richert Vogt von Koch and his wife Agathe Henriette Wrede in Stockholm. After school he studied at the University of Stockholm, which was then called Högskola ( college), with Gösta Mittag-Leffler mathematics. In 1891 he published a work on the solution of differential equations, which was partly based on previous work of Henri Poincaré. A year later he was charged with a work that included his findings and Poincaré, PhD. From 1893 to was cooking in various positions as an assistant professor. In 1905 he accepted a professorship at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and in 1911 he succeeded his former mentor Mittag-Leffler on the chair as professor of mathematics at the University of Stockholm. His publications include papers on number theory and prime numbers. Helge von Koch died on 11 March 1924.

With his work on the theory of infinite matrices and infinite systems of differential equations at the beginning of the 20th century, he was one of the founders of functional analysis. Wrongly believe some mathematicians that Koch had indeed been a solid mathematician, but had done nothing really new or groundbreaking in its compartment. With the by Werner Heisenberg in 1925 presented as matrix mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics was that of Koch's approach of infinite matrices as a representation of self-adjoint unbounded linear operators a possible mathematical foundations of a new physical theory. Finally, the quantum mechanics and the functional analysis followed a presentation independent way, the theory of infinite matrices became unwieldy formalism as more and more into oblivion. Thus, Helge von Koch owes its present name recognition only named after him fractals, the Koch curve, the derived Koch snowflake and the Cook Island.