Karl Heun

Karl Heun ( born April 3, 1859 in Wiesbaden, † January 10, 1929 in Karlsruhe ) was a German mathematician.

Life

Karl Heun studied mathematics and philosophy in Göttingen ( and briefly in Hall ) where he received his doctorate in 1881 with the theme of the spherical harmonics and Laméschen functions as determinants. He then worked as a teacher at an agricultural college in Wehlau until he emigrated to England in 1883 where he taught until 1885 in Uppingham.

He completed his studies in London and qualified in June 1886 in Munich on the subject over linear second order differential equations whose solutions are related by the continued fraction algorithm. From 1886 to 1889 he taught at the University of Munich, but had to work as a teacher in Berlin again due to lack of financial support from 1890 to 1902.

1900 was awarded the title of professor Karl Heun and took over in 1902 the Chair of Theoretical Mechanics at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, where he worked until his retirement in 1922.

Work

According to him, the Heun method is called, a simple method for the numerical solution of initial value problems.