Johann Faulhaber
John Faulhaber ( born May 5, 1580 Ulm, † September 10, 1635 in Ulm ) was a German mathematician, engineer and military architect.
Life
Faulhaber first learned Weber, however, was a pupil of the mathematician David Selzlin and Sealer Johannes Krafft later city mathematician and surveyor in Ulm. At times he had to leave the city because he had excited by predictions and cabalistic number speculation the displeasure of the Ulm church authority. He collaborated among others with Johannes Kepler and Ludolph van Ceulen. In addition to his work as a Reckoner, he worked on the fortifications of different cities such as Basel, where he was from 1622 to 1624 fortress engineer. To this end he stayed even with Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. He also built water wheels in his hometown and geometrical instruments primarily for military purposes. In his " engineering school " (4 parts, 1632-1633 ) he made known the Brigg'schen logarithms in Germany.
After his marriage Faulhaber opened in 1600 his own school in Ulm. With him one last bloom of Mathematics of the Reckoner has been reached.
His mathematical works deal mainly with sums over powers of natural numbers to exponents 17 ( Faulhabersche formula ), the solution of the general equation of degree 4, the sets of Pythagoras and Heron of Alexandria in three-dimensional space. With the introduction of the later so designated Bernoulli Jacob Bernoulli numbers related to Faulhaber.
Faulhaber dealt, according to the customs of the time, with alchemy, astrology and numerology. He was a member of the Rosicrucians, his work influenced the young Descartes. In 1619, after his participation in the Ulmer comet Streit ( 1618), he published his work " Fama Syderea Nova " with divinations in connection with the Great Comet of 1618 ( C/1618 W1 ) and the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. He was accused of plagiarism by his friend Johannes Kepler data, but he could refute that.
John Faulhaber is the progenitor of a family of mathematicians and engineers. His son, John Matthew Faulhaber (1604-1683) was also a military engineer in Ulm.