Gotthold Eisenstein
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Gotthold Eisenstein | |
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![]() Gotthold Eisenstein | |
Born | Berlin, Prussia | 16 April 1823
Died | 11 October 1852 Berlin, Prussia | (aged 29)
Nationality | German |
Alma mater | University of Berlin |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematics |
Doctoral advisor | Ernst Eduard Kummer Nikolaus Wolfgang Fischer |
Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein (16 April 1823 – 11 October 1852) was a German mathematician. He specialized in number theory and analysis, and proved several results. Eisenstein died before the age of 30. He was born and died in Berlin, Prussia.
Early life
[edit]His parents, Johann Konstantin Eisenstein and Helene Pollack, were of Jewish descent and converted to Protestantism prior to his birth.[1] From an early age, he demonstrated talent in mathematics and music. As a young child he learned to play piano. He continued to play and compose for piano throughout his life.
He suffered various health problems throughout his life, including meningitis as an infant, a disease that took the lives of all five of his brothers and sisters. In 1837, at the age of 14, he enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium, and soon thereafter at Friedrich Werder Gymnasium in Berlin. His teachers recognized his talents in mathematics, but by 15 years of age he had already learned all the material taught at the school. He then began to study differential calculus from the works of Leonhard Euler and Joseph-Louis Lagrange.
At 17, still a student, Eisenstein began to attend classes given by Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet and others at the University of Berlin. In 1842, before taking his final exams, he traveled with his mother to England, to search for his father. In 1843, he met William Rowan Hamilton in Dublin, who gave him a copy of his book on Niels Henrik Abel's proof of the impossibility of solving fifth-degree polynomials, a work that would stimulate Eisenstein's interest in mathematical research.
Five remarkable years
[edit]In 1843, Eisenstein returned to Berlin, where he passed his graduation exams and enrolled in the University the following autumn. In January 1844, he had already presented his first work to the Berlin Academy, on cubic forms in two variables. The same year he met for the first time with Alexander von Humboldt, who would later become Eisenstein's patron. Humboldt managed to find grants from the King, the government of Prussia, and the Berlin academy to compensate for Eisenstein's extreme poverty.[2] The money, always late and grudgingly given, was earned in full measure by Eisenstein: in 1844 alone, he published over 23 papers and two problems in Crelle's Journal, including two proofs of the law of quadratic reciprocity, and the analogous laws of cubic reciprocity and quartic reciprocity.
In June 1844, Eisenstein visited Carl Friedrich Gauss in Göttingen. In 1845, Kummer saw to it that he received an honorary doctorate at the University of Breslau. Jacobi also encouraged the distinction, but later relations between Jacobi and Eisenstein were always rocky, due primarily to a disagreement over the order of discoveries made in 1846. In 1847, Eisenstein habilitated at the University of Berlin, and he began to teach there. Bernhard Riemann attended his classes on elliptic functions.
Imprisonment and death
[edit]In 1848, Eisenstein was imprisoned briefly by the Prussian army for his revolutionary activities in Berlin. Eisenstein always had republican sympathies, and while he did not actively participate in the revolution of 1848, he was arrested on 19 March of that year. Although he was released just one day later, the harsh treatment had damaged his already delicate health. Additionally, his official stipends were revoked because of his association with the Republican cause, despite Humboldt tenaciously coming to his defense.
Despite his health, Eisenstein continued writing papers on quadratic partitions of prime numbers and the reciprocity laws. In 1851, at the instigation of Gauss, he was elected to the Academy of Göttingen; one year later, this time at the recommendation of Dirichlet, he was also elected to the Academy of Berlin.
He died of tuberculosis at the age of 29. Humboldt, then 83, accompanied his remains to the cemetery. He had recently obtained, albeit too late, the funding necessary to send Eisenstein on holiday to Sicily.
Publications
[edit]- Eisenstein, Gotthold (1847), Mathematische Abhandlungen. Besonders aus dem Gebiete der höheren Arithmetik und der elliptischen Funktionen (in German), Reimer, Berlin
- Eisenstein, Gotthold (1975), Mathematische Werke (in German), New York: AMS Chelsea Publishing, ISBN 978-0-8284-1280-3, MR 0427029 Weil's review
Eponym concepts
[edit]- Eisenstein's criterion
- Eisenstein ideal
- Eisenstein integer
- Eisenstein prime
- Eisenstein reciprocity
- Eisenstein sum
- Eisenstein series
- Eisenstein's theorem
- Eisenstein triple
- Eisenstein–Kronecker number
- Real analytic Eisenstein series
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Eisenstein biography". Archived from the original on 2012-03-31. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
- ^ Helmut de Terra, Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1955, pp. 334-36.
Further reading
[edit]- Biermann, Kurt-R. (1959), "Eisenstein, Ferdinand Gotthold Max", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), 4: 420
- Cantor, Moritz (1877), "Eisenstein, Gotthold", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), 5: 774–775, wikisource
- Dunnington, G. Waldo (1955), Carl Friedrich Gauss: titan of science. A study of his life and work, New York: Exposition Press, ISBN 978-0-88385-547-8, MR 0072814
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Gotthold Eisenstein", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- Schappacher, Norbert (1998), "Gotthold Eisenstein. 16 April 1823--11 October 1852", Mathematics in Berlin, Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser, pp. 55–60, MR 1648677
- Warnecke, Heinz (1988), "Gotthold Eisenstein (1823--1852)---ein mathematisches und hochschulpädagogisches Talent aus Berlin", Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe, 37 (2): 187–193, ISSN 0863-0631, MR 0975243
- Weil, André (1976), "Review: Gotthold Eisenstein, Mathematische Werke", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 82 (5): 658–663, doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1976-14095-5, ISSN 0002-9904
- Lemmermeyer, Franz (2020), "Gotthold Eisenstein and Philosopher John", European Mathematical Society Newsletter, 2020–9 (117): 26–28, arXiv:2101.03344, doi:10.4171/NEWS/117/5, S2CID 225256928
External links
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- Gotthold Eisenstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- The life of Gotthold Ferdinand Eisenstein Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine by M.Schmitz (PDF format)
- Ferdinand Eisenstein by Larry Freeman (2005), Fermat's Last Theorem Blog.
- 1823 births
- 1852 deaths
- 19th-century German mathematicians
- German number theorists
- Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
- Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
- German people of Jewish descent
- German Protestants
- Scientists from Berlin
- 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
- Mathematicians from the Kingdom of Prussia
- Tuberculosis deaths in Germany