Werner Boy

Werner Boy ( born May 4, 1879 in Barmen, † September 6, 1914, near Vitry -le- François ) was a German mathematician who discovered named after him Boy surface, an immersion of the real projective plane in three-dimensional space. He found it in 1901 after his doctor father David Hilbert had told him to prove the impossibility of this immersion. Boy was able to make several drawings of this area, and discovered their potential three-fold rotational symmetry, but could not find a parametric representation for it. Only in 1978 was Bernard Morin a parametrization with computer support.

After completing his dissertation in 1901 and the filing of the State examination 1902 Boy made ​​from a one-year military service, then he completed a year of seminary at the Municipal Gymnasium in Bonn and a year of probation at the Royal Prussian secondary school to St. Johann- Saarbrücken. Finally Boy worked as a senior teacher from 1905 to 1909 at the secondary school in Krefeld, and then at the grammar school in his native town of Barmen ( today a part of Wuppertal). He died as a soldier in the first weeks of World War I in Vitry -le- François.

Writings

• About the greater curvature integra and the topology of closed surfaces, PhD thesis, 1903