Otto Hesse

Otto Hesse ( * April 22, 1811 in Königsberg i Pr; † August 4, 1874 in Munich) was a German mathematician.

Life

Hesse was born in Konigsberg, the son of Johann Gottlieb Hesse (1791-1829), a merchant and brewer, and his wife Anna Karoline Reiter ( 1788-1865 ). He studied from 1833-1837 in his hometown at the Albertus University of Königsberg at Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. In 1832 he became active in the Corps Masovia. Among his teachers were Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel and his brother Friedrich Julius Corp. Richelot. He also attended the lectures on physics by Ludwig Moser and Franz Ernst Neumann. In 1837 he was the senior teacher exam for mathematics and physics. After a long journey on foot through Germany, Austria and Switzerland, he taught physics and chemistry at the newly-founded Industrial School of Königsberg. With a PhD in Jacobi he received his doctorate in 1840 Dr. phil .. He habilitated in the same year at the Philosophical Faculty of the Albertina. In 1841 he married Marie Sophie Emilie Dulk, eldest daughter of the pharmacist and chemistry professor Friedrich Philipp Dulk and sister of the playwright Albert Dulk. The couple had one ( died young ) son and five daughters.

From 1840 taught Hesse, first as a lecturer at the Albertina, since 1845 as ao Professor, initially without government salary. 1848, during the German Revolution, he participated in the organization of Königsberg vigilantes. In 1850 he became deputy city councilor in Königsberg. He received in 1855 at the Friedrich -University Halle A, or the professor; but in 1856 he moved to the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg. In support of the scientific and social life with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, Hermann von Helmholtz and Joseph Victor von Scheffel he confined himself to his well-attended lectures, until he was finally appointed in 1868 to the newly founded Polytechnic School in Munich.

In 1869 he was elected an associate member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. 1871 was followed by the honorary membership of the London Mathematical Society.

Scientifically, he was the most productive in his Konigsberg time. Hesse dealt in particular with the analytical geometry and determinants. He introduced the Hessian matrix and its determinant and the Hessian normal form of the plane. After the later judgment of Felix Klein him the move to Heidelberg did not get " the rest, Heidelberg was not favorable for Hesse's development. He succumbed to the charm of the Neckar city, which is indeed a place of intellectual stimulation, much less but the strenuous work. [ ... There ] He spent probably some hilarious an hour [ ... ], but his mathematical productivity went above and in the fractures. [ ... ] In Munich, he turned back to the creative activity, but only with shared success. To separate the safety, right and wrong, he had lost. "

Two daughters Hesse were successively married to the sculptor Julius Zumbusch, another with the Austro -Swiss Social Democrats awe Heinrich, brother of Andreas Scheu and Franz Josef Georg Scheu. Heinrich shyness in turn was married in first marriage to Anna Dulk, daughter of Albert Dulk, brother of Hesse's 1877 deceased wife.

The asteroid ( 25029 ) Ludwig Hesse was named after him.

Writings

• Lectures on analytic geometry of space. Leipzig ( 3 A. 1876)
• Lectures from the analytical geometry of the straight line, the point and the circle. Leipzig ( 1881). Edited by A. Gundelfinger
• The determinants treated elementary. Leipzig ( 2nd ed 1872)
• The four species. Leipzig ( 1872)

His collected works were published in 1897 by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.