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Hermann Graßmann. Biography By Hans-Joachim Petsche. Translated by Mark Minnes. Basel (Birkhäuser). ISBN xx + pp. No price n Graßmann. Roots and Traces. Autographs and Unknown Documents Edited by Hans-Joachim Petsche, Lloyd Kannenberg, Gottfried Keßler an
Book Reviews / Historia Mathematica 37 () – References Bos, H.J.M., Redefining Geometrical Exactness.
Free biography sample Hermann Grassmann Biography. Who was Hermann Grassmann and what do we know of his life and work? The principal content of this website is about his work. This page is a short biographical note on his life. First EditionDescartes’ Transformation of the Early Modern Concept of Construction. Springer-Verlag, New York. Costabel, P., Essai sur les secrets des Traités de la roulette. Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 15 (3), – Manders, K., Algebra in Roth, Faulhaber, and Descartes. Historia Mathematica 33, – Mehl, E., Descartes en Allemagne – Le contexte allemand de l’élaboration de la science cartésienne.
Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg. Sébastien Maronne SPHERE-REHSEIS (CNRS, Université Paris Diderot), UMR , Laboratoire de Philosophie et d’Histoire des Sciences, Université Paris 7 REHSEIS UMR , Case , 5 rue Thomas Mann, Paris Cedex 13, France Available online 4 December doi/ Hermann Graßmann. Biography By Hans-Joachim Petsche.
Translated by Mark Minnes. Basel (Birkhäuser). ISBN xx + pp. No price stated. Hermann Graßmann. Roots and Traces. Autographs and Unknown Documents Edited by Hans-Joachim Petsche, Lloyd Kannenberg, Gottfried Keßler and Jolanta Liskowacka. Basel (Birkhäuser). ISBN xi + pp. No price stated. Recent interest in the achievements of Hermann Grassmann (–) has been much stimulated by the celebration of N-centenaries when N takes fashionable values.
N = 3/2 of the first version of his Ausdehnungslehre led in both to an English translation of that work and several papers [Grassmann, ] and to a lively conference in Germany with the production of two significant volumes of proceedings [Schreiber, ; Schubring, ], while N = 2 for his birth excited in a comparably energetic gathering in Potsdam, in time for which the two books under review were published.
In due course its own proceedings will form the final volume in this excellent series, reporting upon not only historical researches but also some recent applications of Grassmann algebras, for example to computer science. The biography is an English translation of a book published by the same house as [Petsche, ] and reviewed in these pages by [Lewis, ].
It was largely based upon the author’s doctoral dissertation of , although some attention has been paid to research produced in the interim.
Hermann grassmann biography sample format
View three larger pictures. Justus had been ordained a minister but he had taken a position in the Gymnasium at Stettin as a teacher of mathematics and physics. He was a fine academic who wrote several school books on physics and mathematics, and also undertook research on crystallography. Johanne and Justus had twelve children, Hermann being their third child. Hermann's brother Robert also became a mathematician and the two collaborated on many projects.The four chapters present Hermann Grassmann’s life and work in a somewhat unusual manner: first the entire life; then his main sources of inspiration, especially his father Justus (–), his brother Robert (–), and the Berlin philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (–); then Hermann’s place in the history of mathematics, especially the two versions of the Ausdehnungslehre (, ) and his work on the foundations of arithmetic; and finally a more detailed look at the theory and its Book Reviews / Historia Mathematica 37 () – relationship to the philosophy of Schleiermacher, and its influence up to the early 20th century.
The tale is not just that of an applied mathematician and physicist; also noted are Hermann’s remarkable Sanskrit dictionary of the Rig Veda poems (–), and his work on the German language, plant names, and chemistry education. On the whole I prefer a biography to exhibit more synchrony than diachrony, which here leads to several repetitions.
But the story is supplemented by boxes of information on special topics that are handled in nearby text, illustrations of various kinds, especially likenesses, and a detailed chronology at the end. However, its organization is a little clumsy. Endnotes are placed at the end of each chapter instead of being gathered together near the end of the book; furthermore, many of them are just citations of passages from items listed in the (substantial) bibliography, and so would have been more comfortably communicated either as footnotes or as references in text placed within brackets.
The lack of a subject index is also noticeable. The author is correct to emphasize the role of Schleiermacher’s philosophy, not only for its own significance but also because it is unusual for a mathematician to be consciously influenced by a philosophy in the formation and development of his theory. Schleiermacher had advocated a method of ‘‘dialectics” explicitly different from the method of synthesizing thesis and antithesis that was promoted by G.W.F.
Hermann grassmann biography sample To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. Recent scholarship has renewed interest in Hermann Grassmann, particularly around significant anniversaries of his work and life. Hans-Joachim Petsche's biography, enriched by insights into Grassmann's influences and contributions to mathematics and philosophy, presents a comprehensive but at times repetitive look at his life, scientific endeavors, and familial ties. Complementary to this is a collection of family documents that sheds light on Grassmann's relationships and the historical context of his work.Hegel, his more famous Berlin colleague, but opponent; in contrast, ‘‘His method is to distinctly define the opposing elements [of thought and being] and then to seek their harmonious combination by means of a deeper conception” [Smith, , –], in order both to develop theories of all kinds and to assess them epistemologically, especially as a means of increasing the certainty of knowledge.
Hermann adapted this methodology to develop his theories in a framework of pairs of pairs of contrasted notions, such as intension/extension and addition/multiplication (not necessarily arithmetical); sometimes he used the same pair twice, such as equality/inequality. The Grassmann family lived in Stettin, then a significant Prussian port within the Hanseatic League (and today the town of Szczecin in Poland); not a backwater, then, but also hardly a center of culture or science.
Their lives were fairly uneventful as school-teachers (or scholar and publisher in the case of Robert), apart from the political disturbances of , where the brothers not only took a conservative position but also established a local newspaper to further their cause. The second book under review here is a welcome novelty: a collection of family documents including also Justus’s brother and Robert’s foster-father Friedrich (–), a schools administrator.
Biography sample for work: Following is a very brief biography of Hermann Grassmann, which relies heavily on Michael Crowe’s seminal work A History of Vector Analysis. For a more recent and complete evaluation of Grassmann’s life, the reader is referred to the excellent works of Hans-Joachim Petsche [see below].
After a biographical statement on each figure (that on Justus written by Hermann, on Friedrich by Robert, and the other two autobiographical) the documents in each section include letters regarding appointments or publications, and some letters from Hermann to Robert written in the mids. Some of them come from a small but important collection of family materials that had been handled by Robert at some stage but then disappeared until its recent emergence on the internet, when it was purchased by Szczecin Town Library; a presentation of the collection was a highlight of the day of the Potsdam conference that was spent in the town.
All documents are translated into English, usually in a parallel column on the page; several original folios are illustrated, together with a few likenesses. At Potsdam I recommended Robert as worthy of further historical research; although he has received some welcome attention in both books under review and already in [Schubring, ], he is the most neglected of the three.
It is known that he worked closely with his brother at various times; thus greater awareness of him should increase our understanding of Hermann. But he is a figure of considerable interest in his own right; less original and influential than Hermann but much more prolific and quite extraordinarily wide-ranging, and an enthusiast for Schleiermacher and the use of pairs of pairs of Book Reviews / Historia Mathematica 37 () – contrasted notions.
Hermann grassmann biography sample pdf He was also a physicist, neohumanist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was not recognized in his lifetime. Hermann often collaborated with his brother Robert. Grassmann was an undistinguished student until he obtained a high mark on the examinations for admission to Prussian universities. Beginning in , he studied theology at the University of Berlin , also taking classes in classical languages, philosophy, and literature.In particular, 20 of his around 50 self-published books constitute Das Gebäude des Wissens (–), an page (sic) detailed classification not only of knowledge of all major kinds but also of the means by which humans come to know it; this feature, which itself shows traces from Schleiermacher, lends his system several novel touches relative to those of other large-scale philosophical systematizers such as Christian Wolff, Dénis Diderot, Auguste Comte, or André-Marie Ampère [Grattan-Guinness, ].
Early on in its foreword he inserted a long autobiographical footnote that is quoted in the documents book and might have qualified for inclusion within it. In contrast to Hermann’s reserve in print, Robert devoted many books both within and without this project to proclaiming the truths of Protestant Christianity and examining several parts of Biblical history.
N-centenarophiles should know that N = 2 for Robert’s birth is due in References Grassmann, H., A New Branch of Mathematics: The Ausdehnungslehre of , and Other Works. Translated by Lloyd C. Kannenberg. Open Court, Chicago. Grattan-Guinness, I., Discovering Robert Grassmann (–). In: Grassmann Potsdam proceedings volume, to appear.
Lewis, A.C., Review of [Petsche, ]. Hist. Math. 36, 82– Petsche, H.-J., Graßmann. Birkhäuser, Basel. Schreiber, P. (Ed.), Hermann Grassmann: Werk und Wirkung. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Publication of the Lineale Ausdehnungslehre, held in Lieschow, May 23–28, ErnstMoritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald.
Schubring, G. (Ed.), Hermann Gunther Graßmann (–)—Visionary Scientist and Neohumanist Scholar. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Smith, J.F., Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst (–).
In: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. pp. – I. Grattan-Guinness Middlesex University Business School, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, UK E-mail address: eb7io6gg Available online 25 January doi/ Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany. Individual Fates and Global Impact By Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze. Princeton and Oxford (Princeton University Press).
ISBN xxv + pp. US$ This is a revised version, in English, of a book [Siegmund-Schultze, ] originally published in German by Vieweg. That version was widely reviewed in German (one of the most complete reviews is by a fellow historian of the era, Norbert Schappacher []), and also in English, especially in a magisterial joint review in this journal by David Rowe [] (of two books, the other being [Siegmund-Schultze, ]), and in one by Leo Corry [] in