Wilhelm Ahrens (mathematician)

Wilhelm Ahrens ( born March 3 1872 in Lübz, † May 23, 1927 in Rostock; Complete name: Wilhelm Ernst Martin Georg Ahrens ) was a German mathematician and writer.

Life and work

Ahrens was born in Lübz at the Elde in Mecklenburg and studied from 1890 to 1897 in Rostock at Otto Staude, where he received his doctorate summa cum laude. At the same time he took the head teacher exam. From 1895 to 1896 he was an instructor at the German School in Antwerp and then was still studying for a semester at Sophus Lie in Leipzig. Inspired by this, he wrote "On transformation groups all of whose subgroups are invariant" (Hamburger Math Society Vol 4, 1902). In 1897 he was a teacher in Magdeburg at the Baugewerkeschule, from 1901 at the engineering school. In 1904 he moved again to Rostock to be very active as a writer.

He worked a lot for the history of mathematics and mathematical games ( recreational mathematics ), about which he wrote a great work and also contributed an article for the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences. His great predecessors were Jacques Ozanam in France, where the number theorist Edouard Lucas (1842-1891) wrote similar books in the 19th century, as well as Walter William Rouse Ball ( 1850-1925 ) in England ( Mathematical recreations and essays, 1892), Sam Loyd (1841-1901) in the U.S. and Ernest Dudeney (1857-1930) in England. In this sense it is possible Martin Gardner and Ian Stewart, the editor of the mathematics column in Scientific American, than consider his successor. He was also a book of quotations and anecdotes about mathematicians out ( jest and earnest in mathematics ). He has written numerous journal articles.

Publications

  • Mathematical Recreations and games, Teubner, Leipzig 1901 ( digitized ), 2nd Edition 1910-1918 in 2 volumes
  • Mathematical Games, in: Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences, Volume 1, Part 2, Teubner, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 1080-1093 ( digitized )
  • Jest and earnest in Mathematics, Teubner, Leipzig 1904 ( digitized, even when Internet Archive with additional download options ) - Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 2002
  • Mathematical games ( in the range from natural and spiritual world, Vol 170; abridged version of " Mathematical Recreations and games" ), Leipzig, Teubner, 1907, 4th edition 1919
  • Scholars anecdotes, Sack, Berlin-Schöneberg, 1911
  • The great king. From the works and work, aphorisms and anecdotes, Sack, Berlin-Schöneberg, 1912
  • Mathematicians anecdotes ( = Mathematical Library, 18 ), Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin, 1916, 2nd edition 1920
  • The theater in the sun of humor. Cheerful images from world stage and stage history, Sack, Berlin 1913
  • Old and new in the entertainment Mathematics, Springer, Berlin 1918
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