Philipp Ludwig von Seidel
Philipp Ludwig Ritter von Seidel ( born October 24, 1821 in Zweibrücken, † August 13, 1896 in Munich) was a German mathematician, astronomer and optician. In some sources he is known only as Ludwig Seidel.
Biography
Seidel studied at the University of Berlin, the Albertina in Königsberg and the Ludwig -Maximilians- University of Munich. In 1846 he received his doctorate with a thesis De optima forma speculorum telescopicorum at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich. Since 1847 lecturer, he became an associate in 1851, in 1855 a full professor at the University of Munich.
Around 1855 he created the named after him Seidel theory of optical aberrations. In 1857 he published his widely acclaimed book about it, was long the standard work of the area, partly because Josef Maximilian Petzval planned overall presentation before printing was lost.
In 1851 he was elected an associate member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 1861, he became a full member.
Close collaboration with Carl August von Steinheil, with whom he at first mainly metrological, but then also performed physical and photometric studies and his work of 1856 established the theoretical basis for a simplified manufacturing process of optical glass for the company Steinheil. Together with Steinheil Seidel led by the first photometric measurements of stars.
In 1874 he published his work for the iterative solution of linear systems of equations, a method that is known as the Gauss - Seidel method in numerical mathematics. From 1879 to 1882 Seidel was the successor of Johann Lamont managing director of the observatory Bogenhausen. Among his students at the University of Munich was Max Planck.