Gotthold Eisenstein's father was Johan Konstantin Eisenstein and his mother was Helene Pollack.

The family was Jewish but before Gotthold, who was their first child, was born they had converted
from Judaism to become Protestants. Their family were not well off, for Johan Eisenstein, after
serving in the Prussian army for eight years, found it hard to adjust to a steady job in civilian life.
Despite trying a variety of jobs he did not find a successful occupation for most of his life, although
towards the end of his life things did go right for him.

Eisenstein suffered all his life from bad health but at least he survived childhood which none of his
five brothers and sisters succeeded in doing. All of them died of meningitis, and Gotthold himself
also contracted the disease but he survived it. This disease and the many others which he suffered
from as a child certainly had a psychological as well as a physical effect on him and he was a
hypochondriac all his life. His mother, Helene Eisenstein, had a major role in her son's early
education.

He wrote an autobiography and in it he describes the way that his mother taught him the alphabet
when he was about two years old, associating objects with each letter to suggest their shape, like a
door for O and a key for K. He also describes his early talent for mathematics in these
autobiographical writings (see for example [1]):-

As a boy of six I could understand the proof of a mathematical theorem more readily than that meat
had to be cut with one's knife, not one's fork.
He also showed a considerable talent for music from a young age and he played the piano and
composed music throughout his life.

While he was at elementary school he had health problems but these may have had a lot to do with
the schools which he attended. When he was about ten years old his parents tried to find a solution
to his continual health problems by sending him to Cauer Academy in Charlottenburg, a district of
Berlin which was not incorporated into the city until 1920. This school adopted an almost military
style of discipline and a strict formal approach to education which did nothing for Eisenstein's
creative nature. Rather than improve his health problem, it had the opposite effect and in addition to
continuing physical illnesses he suffered from depression.

In 1837, when he was fourteen years old, Eisenstein entered the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium then
moved to the Friedrich Werder Gymnasium in Berlin to complete his schooling. His mathematical
talents were recognised by his teachers as soon as he entered the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium and
his teachers gave him every encouragement. However, he soon went well beyond the school syllabus
in mathematics and from the age of fifteen he was buying mathematics books to study on his own.
He began by learning the differential and integral calculus from the works of Euler and Lagrange.

By the time he was seventeen, although he was still at school, he began to attend lectures
by Dirichlet and other mathematicians at the University of Berlin. It was around this time that his
father, having failed to find satisfactory employment in Germany, went to England to try to find a
better life. Eisenstein remained at school in Berlin becoming more and more devoted to mathematics.
He wrote in his autobiography about the reasons that he was so attracted to mathematics:-
What attracted me so strongly and exclusively to mathematics, apart from the actual content, was
particularly the specific nature of the mental processes by which mathematical concepts are handled.
This way of deducing and discovering new truths from old ones, and the extraordinary clarity and
self-evidence of the theorems, the ingeniousness of the ideas ... had an irresistible fascination for me.
Beginning from the individual theorems, I grew accustomed to delve more deeply into their
relationships and to grasp whole theories as a single entity. That is how I conceived the idea of
mathematical beauty ...
In 1842 he bought a French translation of Gauss's Disquisitiones arithmeticae Ⓣand, like Dirichlet,
he became fascinated by the number theory which he read there. In the summer of 1842, before
taking his final school examinations, he travelled with his mother to England where they joined his
father who was searching for a better life. In [12] Warnecke argues that during this visit to England
Eisenstein became familiar with applied technology and science which aroused his interest in
mathematics generally and in particular contributed to his desire to become a mathematician.

The family tried spending time in Wales and Ireland but Eisenstein's father could not find the right
job to give him satisfaction and financial security. As they moved from place to place Eisenstein
read Disquisitiones arithmeticae Ⓣand played the piano whenever it was possible. While in Ireland
in 1843 Eisenstein met Hamilton in Dublin, a city he would have dearly liked to have settled in,
and Hamiltongave him a copy of a paper that he had written on Abel's work on the impossibility of
solving quintic equations. This further stimulated Eisenstein to begin research in mathematics.

In June 1843 Eisenstein returned to Germany with his mother who separated from his father at this
time. Eisenstein applied to take his final school examinations and was allowed to do so in
August/September. He graduated with a glowing report from his mathematics teacher [1]:-

His knowledge of mathematics goes far beyond the scope of the secondary school curriculum. His
talent and zeal lead one to expect that some day he will make an important contribution to the
development and expansion of science.
His teacher, Schellbach, was right and it would not be long before his expectations were fulfilled.
Eisenstein enrolled at the University of Berlin in the autumn of 1843 and in January 1844 he
delivered Hamilton's paper to the Berlin Academy. At the same time as he submitted to the Berlin
Academy his own paper on cubic forms with two variables.

He was working on a variety of topics at this time including quadratic forms and cubic forms, the
reciprocity theorem for cubic residues, quadratic partition of prime numbers and reciprocity
laws. Crelle was appointed as referee for Eisenstein's paper and, with his usual intuition for spotting
young mathematical talent, Crelle immediately realised that here was a potential
genius. Crelle communicated with Alexander von Humboldt who also took immediate note of the
extraordinarily talented youngster. Eisenstein met von Humboldt in March 1844.

Eisenstein's financial position was poor and von Humboldt went out of his way to obtain grants from
the King, the Prussian government, and the Berlin Academy. These were given somewhat
grudgingly, always for a short period, arriving late and rather lacking generosity. Had it not been for
von Humboldt's personal generosity, Eisenstein would have had a harder time than in fact he had.
But Eisenstein was a sensitive person and he was not happy to receive the grants, particularly when
he felt that the official ones were given grudgingly. The authorities should certainly have been
pleased with the return for their money since Eisenstein published 23 papers and two problems
in Crelle's Journal in 1844.

In June 1844 Eisenstein went to Göttingen for two weeks to visit Gauss. Gauss had a reputation
for being extremely hard to impress, but Eisenstein had sent some of his papers to Gauss before
the visit and Gauss was full of praise. At this time Eisenstein was working on a variety of topics
including quadratic and cubic forms and the reciprocity theorem for cubic residues. It was a highly
successful visit and Eisenstein made a friend at Göttingen, namely Moritz Stern. Despite the instant
international fame that Göttingen achieved while still in his first year at university, he was depressed
and this depression would only grow worse through his short life.

Kummer arranged that the University of Breslau award Eisenstein an honorary doctorate in February
1845. Jacobi had also been involved in arranging this honour, but Eisenstein and Jacobi were not
always on the best of terms having a very up and down relationship. From 1846 to 1847 Eisenstein
worked on elliptic functions and in the first of these years he was involved in a priority dispute
with Jacobi. He wrote to Stern explaining the situation (see for example [1]):-

... the whole trouble is that, when I learned of [Jacobi's] work on cyclotomy, I did not immediately
and publicly acknowledge him as the originator, while I frequently have done this in the case
of Gauss. That I omitted to do so in this instance is merely the fault of my naive innocence.
In 1847 Eisenstein received his habilitation from the University of Berlin and began to
lecture. Riemann attended lectures that he gave on elliptic functions in that year and we comment
below on possible interaction between Riemann and Eisenstein at this time.

By 1848 conditions were bad in the German Confederation. Unemployment and crop failures had
led to discontent and disturbances. The news that Louis-Philippe had been overthrown by an uprising
in Paris in February 1848 led to revolutions in many states and there was fighting in Berlin.
Republican and socialist feelings meant that the monarchy was in trouble. Eisenstein attended some
pro-democracy meetings but did not play any active political role. However, on 19 March 1848,
during street fighting in Berlin shots were fired on the King's troops from a house which Eisenstein
was in (although it was not his own house) and he was arrested. He was released on the following
day but the severe treatment which he had received caused a sharp deterioration in his already delicate
health.

The arrest had another bad side effect for it convinced those funding him that he had republican
sympathies and it became much harder for him to obtain money although von Humboldt continued
to strenuously support him. Writing of his mathematical works written during this period Weil writes
in [3]:-

As any reader of Eisenstein must realise, he felt hard pressed for time during the whole of his short
mathematical career. ... His papers, although brilliantly conceived, must have been written by fits
and starts, with the details worked out only as the occasion arose; sometimes a development is cut
short, only to be taken up again at a later stage. Occasionally Crelle let him send part of a paper to
the press before the whole was finished. One is frequently reminded of Galois' tragic remark 'Je n'ai
pas le temps'.
Despite his health problems Eisenstein published one treatise after another on quadratic partition of
prime numbers and reciprocity laws. He was receiving many honours, for example Gauss proposed
Eisenstein for election to the Göttingen Academy and he was elected in 1851. Early in 1852,
at Dirichlet's request, Eisenstein was elected to the Berlin Academy.

Eisenstein died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 29. His great supporter Alexander von
Humboldt, by that time 83 years of age, followed Eisenstein's coffin at the cemetery. He had
successfully obtained funds to allow Eisenstein to spend time in Sicily in order to recover his health,
but it was too late.

There are three major areas of mathematics to which Eisenstein contributed and we have
already mentioned them above. He worked on the theory of forms with the aim of generalising
the results obtained by Gauss in Disquisitiones arithmeticae Ⓣfor the theory of quadratic forms. He
examined the higher reciprocity laws, with the aim of generalising Gauss's results on quadratic
reciprocity, again contained in Disquisitiones arithmeticae. In his work on this topic Eisenstein
used Kummer's theory of ideals. The work of both Kummer and Eisenstein, and the rivalry which
existed between the two in their work published in 1850 on the higher reciprocity laws, is discussed
in [7].

These two topics on which Eisenstein worked were both strongly motivated
by Gauss's Disquisitiones arithmeticae Ⓣand the paper [13] discusses the copy of this work which
Eisenstein owned from his days at school which is now in the mathematical library in Giessen. In the
paper [13] Weil examines the annotations in the book made by Eisenstein and conjectures
that Riemann received ideas in conversations with Eisenstein which led to his famous paper on
the zeta function.

The third topic to which Eisenstein made a major contribution was the theory of elliptic
functions. Weil writes in [3]:-

Eisenstein, having laid the foundations for a theory of elliptic functions, was able to carry out much
of his design for the building itself, and to indicate how he wished it completed.
Although the topic was pushed forward greatly by Abel and Jacobi, Eisenstein's paper on the topic
in 1847 [10]:-

... developed his own independent analytic theory of elliptic functions, based on the technique of
summing certain conditionally convergent series.
Kronecker wrote (see for example [3]):-

Essentially new points of view ... particularly concerning the transformation theory of theta-functions
...were introduced by Eisenstein in the fundamental but seldom quoted "Beiträge zur Theorie der
elliptischen Funktionen" Ⓣpublished in Crelle's Journal in 1847, which are based upon entirely
original ideas ...
In fact the book [3], the first edition of which appeared in 1976 and was the result of a course given
at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1974, is devoted to this
approach. Kronecker took up these themes [3]:-
Eisenstein's major themes, properly modulated, lend themselves to a large number of interesting
variations; ... much of Kronecker's best work consists of such variations ...
This book by Weil shows that Eisenstein's approach is of major importance to the mathematics
which is being developed today, a great tribute to a genius who died 150 years ago. Often the
power of an approach is illustrated by insight that it adds to simpler well understood cases and
indeed this is well illustrated by Weil:-

As Eisenstein shows, his method for constructing elliptic functions applies beautifully to the simpler
case of trigonometric functions. Moreover, this case provides not merely an illuminating introduction
to his theory, but also the simplest proofs for a series of results, originally discussed by Euler ...
Finally we quote from [10] on the same theme of the relevance of Eisenstein's work today:-

Looking back from today's vantage, Eisenstein's mathematics appear to us more up to date than ever.
It is not so much the harvest of theorems, nor the creation of full-fledged theories, but the way of
looking at things which amazes us ...

In mathematics, Eisenstein's theorem, named after the German mathematician Gotthold Eisenstein, applies to the
coefficients of any power series which is an algebraic functionwith rational number coefficients. Through the
theorem, it is readily demonstrable that a function such as the exponential function must be a transcendental
function.
Suppose therefore that

is a formal power series with rational coefficients an, which has a non-zero radius of convergence in the complex
plane, and within it represents an analytic function that is in fact an algebraic function. Let dn denote
the denominator of an, as a fraction in lowest terms. Then Eisenstein's theorem states that there is a finite
set S of prime numbers p, such that every prime factor of a number dn is contained in S.
This has an interpretation in terms of p-adic numbers: with an appropriate extension of the idea, the p-adic
radius of convergence of the series is at least 1, for almost all p (i.e. the primes outside the finite set S). In fact
that statement is a little weaker, in that it disregards any initial partial sum of the series, in a way that
may vary according to p. For the other primes the radius is non-zero.
Eisenstein's original paper is the short communication Über eine allgemeine Eigenschaft der Reihen-
Entwicklungen aller algebraischen Functionen (1852), reproduced in Mathematische Gesammelte Werke, Band
II, Chelsea Publishing Co., New York, 1975, p. 765–767.
More recently, many authors have investigated precise and effective bounds quantifying the above almost all.
See, e.g., Sections 11.4 and 11.55 of the book by E. Bombieri & W. Gubler.

Gotthold Eisenstein
Berlin 1823 -
Berlin 1852

Gotthold Eisenstein (specifically Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein) was born on April 16, 1823, in Berlin. Shortly
after beginning his studies in mathematics at the university in Berlin, the founder and editor of the "Journal für die
reine angewandte Mathematik" ("Journal for Pure Applied Mathematics") August Crelle discovered the
mathematical genius of Eisenstein and introduced him to Alexander von Humboldt, who became his patron.
Humboldt, who procured financial support for him, then sent Gotthold Eisenstein to Carl Friedrich Gauß in
Göttingen in 1844. Gauß was also full of praise for the work of this young mathematician. The recognition by Gauß
brought him an international reputation. This is how, during his third semester of university, he was presented with
 an honorary doctorate by the University of Breslau.
In 1847, Gotthold Eisenstein did his post-doctoral work in Berlin and began to hold lectures there. On the
recommendation of Gauß, he was inducted into the Göttingen Academy in 1851 and was inducted into to the Berlin
Academy in 1852 on the recommendation of the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.
Gotthold Eisenstein died that same year on October 11 in Berlin from tuberculosis. Eisenstein's work is known
today by the terms named for him, the Eisenstein integers, the Eisenstein series, and the Eisenstein function.

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 monies, always late and grudgingly given, were
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.
E. T. Bell in his 1937 book Men of Mathematics (page 237) claims that Gauss said "There have been but three
epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein", and this has been widely quoted in writings
about Eisenstein. This is not a quote by Gauss, but is (a translation of) the end of a sentence from the biography of
Eisenstein by Moritz Cantor (1877), one of Gauss's last students and a historian of mathematics, who was
summarizing his recollection of a remark made by Gauss about Eisenstein in a conversation many years earlier.
Although it is doubtful that Gauss really put Eisenstein in the same league as Newton, his writings show that Gauss
thought very highly of Eisenstein. For example, a letter from Gauss to Humboldt, dated the 14th of April in 1846,
says that Eisenstein's talent is one that nature bestows only a few times a century ("welche die Natur in jedem
Jahrhundert nur wenigen erteilt")

Hypatia, (born c. 355 CE—died March 415, Alexandria), mathematician, astronomer,

and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the
earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge
exists. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician and
astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum (see Researcher’s
Note: Hypatia’s birth date). Theon is best remembered for the part he played in the
preservation of Euclid’s Elements, but he also wrote extensively, commenting
on Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy Tables. Hypatia continued his program, which was
essentially a determined effort to preserve the Greek mathematical and astronomical
heritage in extremely difficult times. She is credited with commentaries on Apollonius of
Perga’s Conics (geometry) and Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetic (number theory), as
well as an astronomical table (possibly a revised version of Book III of her father’s
commentary on the Almagest). These works, the only ones she is listed as having written,
have been lost, although there have been attempts to reconstruct aspects of them. In
producing her commentaries on Apollonius and Diophantus, she was pushing the program
initiated by her father into more recent and more difficult areas. She was, in her time, the
world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for whom such claim can
be made. She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-
specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences.
Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious
conflict between Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans.
Her Neoplatonism was concerned with the approach to the One, an underlying reality
partially accessible via the human power of abstraction from the Platonic forms,
themselves abstractions from the world of everyday reality. Her philosophy also led her to
embrace a life of dedicated virginity. An early manifestation of the religious divide of the
time was the razing of the Serapeum, the temple of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis,
by Theophilus, Alexandria’s bishop until his death in 412 CE. This event was perhaps the
final end of the great Library of Alexandria, since the Serapeum may have contained some
of the Library’s books. Theophilus, however, was friendly with Synesius, an ardent admirer
and pupil of Hypatia, so she was not herself affected by this development but was
permitted to pursue her intellectual endeavours unimpeded. With the deaths of Synesius
and Theophilus and the accession of Cyril to the bishopric of Alexandria, however, this
climate of tolerance lapsed, and shortly afterward Hypatia became the victim of a
particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots. It remains a matter
of vigorous debate how much the guilt of this atrocity is Cyril’s, but the affair made Hypatia
a powerful feminist symbol and a figure of affirmation for intellectual endeavour in the face
of ignorant prejudice. Her intellectual accomplishments alone were quite sufficient to merit
the preservation and respect of her name, but, sadly, the manner of her death added to it
an even greater emphasis.

Smithsonian
People primarily remember Hypatia of Alexandria, martyr of female intellectuals and tragic
heroine, for two things: her philosophical, mathematical, and astronomical teachings and the fact
that she was brutally murdered for them.

Ancient Greece laid the philosophical foundations for much of Western liberal democracy, but
women by and large did not produce its influential “bricks” — that is, save for Hypatia. Beautiful,
brilliant, and bold, the Greeks adored her; even the men, who should have chided her for entering
their turf, bowed to her extraordinary accomplishments.

That adoration makes Hypatia’s murder — one of the most calculated and vicious murders in
history — all the more perplexing, at least on the surface. Much of her life has been lost to history,
but the era’s political and religious turmoil helps suggest that above all else, her pagan beliefs
ultimately led to her death. And, in a sense, immortalized her.

Hypatia’s Beginnings
Most historians estimate that Hypatia was born somewhere around 350 AD to the mathematician
and philosopher Theon, who encouraged her education from an early age. She did not latch on to
her father’s teaching, and quickly found other means to learn about whatever interested her.
Outside of mathematics, she was particularly taken by astronomy and built astrolabes, tools for
examining and measuring celestial bodies in the night sky.

She also established herself as a member of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy and would drape
herself in the robes of the academic elite (something that only men could do at the time, though this
did not deter Hypatia in the least), head into the center of the city and tell anyone who would listen
her thoughts about Plato. As it turned out, a lot of people were listening, and were captivated by her
interpretations — and by Hypatia herself.

People wrote far more about Hypatia after she had died, and they all describe her as being
prepossessing, strikingly beautiful with an almost regal air about her. One such ancient
encyclopedia described her as “Exceedingly beautiful and fair of form. . . in speech articulate and
logical, in her actions prudent and public-spirited, and the rest of the city gave her suitable welcome
and accorded her special respect.”

So just how did Hypatia enter male-dominated academia and not only survive, but thrive? Scholars
say it may have been the result of one simple thing: celibacy.
Wikimedia Commons

The intellectual devoted herself to chastity. She never married and by all accounts was assumed to
be a virgin up until her death. Ancient Greek society prized celibacy as a virtue, and as such men
and women accepted and respected Hypatia in large part because she appeared to be almost sexless.
This made her far less threatening, despite the intensity of her mind and her growing list of
scholastic achievements.

Abstinence didn’t immunize her from sexual advances, however. As one story goes, a male student
became so enamored with her that she feared for his apparent “lovesickness” and took desperate
measures to save him from himself (and we can assume, to save her from having to endure his
aggressive flirtations).

As the student yet again professed his love for her, legend has it that Hypatia lifted her skirt,
yanked off her sanitary protection, and threw her menstrual-effluent rich rags at her relentless
suitor. She then said something to the effect of: Your love is just lust, and you have no idea about
the reality of women, so here it is. Now you ought to be cured of your obsession with me.

He was cured, and Hypatia could return to her work. Other men still kept a close eye on her,
however, and their intentions were no more gentlemanly. They weren’t out to woo her, though. Nor
did they desire to court her. They wanted to kill her.

A Threat To Christianity
Hypatia practiced paganism at a time when Christianity was in its infancy. Still, the burgeoning
religion began to grow and as such many pagans had converted to Christianity out of fear of
persecution.

Hypatia did not; rather, she continued to practice paganism and made no effort to conceal it. This
defiance — though she did, for a time, receive support from the government of Alexandria — made
her a target among power-lusting Christian circles. Once Christians incited violence in the city,
however, this support disappeared and the government’s attempts to protect her ceased.

Science Photo LibraryDeath of Hypatia in Alexandria.

One of Alexandria’s most notable bishops, Cyril, led the charge to take down Hypatia. Cyril had
not succeeded at directly attacking the government, so he decided to eliminate one of its most
powerful assets instead.
Thus, the bishop ordered a mob of monks to kidnap Hypatia, and they proceeded to drag her
through the streets as they tortured her. The monks burned Hypatia and scraped her skin off with
oyster shells. They then took her to a church where they stripped her naked, beat her with tiles, and
tore her limbs from her body.

Cyril justified their actions by saying that Hypatia represented idol-worship, which Christianity
stood and strove against. Unfortunately for Cyril et al, by killing Hypatia, they immortalized her.

Indeed, had they left Hypatia alone, her work and name would likely have been lost to history. In
death, she is as she was in life: unwilling to be silenced, ever-tenacious in her curiosity and wonder.

Jakob Steiner's parents were Anna Barbara Weber (1757-1832) and Niklaus Steiner (1752-1826).
Anna and Niklaus were married on 28 January 1780 and they had eight children. Jakob was the
youngest of the children and spent his early years helping his parents with the small farm and
business that they ran near the village of Utzenstorf, about 24 km north of Bern. He did not learn
to read and write until he was 14 but he then proved invaluable [1]:-

As a child he had to help his parents on the farm and in their business: his skill in calculation was
of great assistance.
Jakob, however, wanted something better for himself but his parents were delighted to have his
help with their business. At the age of 18, against the wishes of his parents, he left home to
attend Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's school at Yverdom at the south-east end of the Lake of
Neuchâtel. Pestalozzi ran his innovative school in the town from 1805 to 1825 and Steiner entered
in the spring of 1814. The fact that Steiner was unable to pay anything towards his education at
the school was not a problem, for Pestalozzi wanted to try out his educational methods on the
poor. Pestalozzi's school had a very significant effect on Steiner's attitude both to the teaching of
mathematics and also to his philosophy when undertaking research in mathematics. He wrote in
1826 (see for example [1]):-

The method used in Pestalozzi's school, treating the truths of mathematics as objects of independent
reflection, led me, as a student there, to seek other grounds for the theorems presented in the
courses than those provided by my teachers. Where possible I looked for deeper bases, and I
succeeded so often that my teachers preferred my proofs to their own. As a result, after I had been
there for a year and a half, it was thought that I could give instruction in mathematics. ... Without
my knowledge or wishing it, continuous concern with teaching has intensified by striving after
scientific unity and coherence. Just as related theorems in a single branch of mathematics grow out
of one another in distinct classes, so, I believed, do the branches of mathematics itself. I glimpsed
the idea of the organic unity of all the objects of mathematics; and I believed at that time that I
could find this unity in some university; if not as an independent subject, at least in the form of
specific suggestions.
In the autumn of 1818, Steiner left Yverdom and travelled to Heidelberg where he earned his
living giving private mathematics lessons. He attended lectures at the Universities of Heidelberg
on combinatorial analysis, differential and integral calculus and algebra. Also at this time he
became interested in mechanics and he wrote three unpublished manuscripts on the topic in
1821, 1824 and 1825. At Easter 1821 he left Heidelberg and travelled to Berlin, where again he
supported himself with a very modest income from tutoring. He had no formal teaching
qualifications so he decided that he needed to sit the necessary examinations to allow him to
become a mathematics master in a gymnasium. He was not completely successful for after taking
the necessary examinations in Berlin he was only awarded a restricted license to teach. His
problem was not in mathematics but in the other subjects which were examined such as history
and literature. This restricted license was, however, sufficient to allow him to be appointed to the
Werder Gymnasium in Berlin.

Steiner's time as a mathematics teacher at the Werder Gymnasium proved a difficult one. At first he
received good reports on his teaching but he fell out with the director of the school, Dr Zimmermann.
Perhaps, understandably, Zimmermann wanted Steiner to teach his courses using a textbook written
by Zimmermann himself. Steiner, who was a firm believer in Pestalozzi's methods of teaching, used
those methods in the classroom. Zimmermann claimed that these were only suitable for elementary
courses, and Steiner was dismissed in the autumn of 1822. The official reason was that his teaching
was receiving criticism but the real reason was clearly his desire to use the methods he thought best
rather than those required by the director, Dr Zimmermann. Again he took up private tutoring to earn
enough money to allow him to attend courses at the University of Berlin, which he did from
November 1822 to August 1824. Carl Jacobi, although eight years younger than Steiner, was a
student at the University of Berlin at this time and soon Steiner and Jacobi became friends. In 1825
Steiner was appointed as an assistant master at the Technical School of Berlin.

The type of difficulties that Steiner had experienced at the Werder Gymnasium again arose at the
Technical School. He was expected to follow the orders of the director, K F von Klöden, without
question. Klöden, almost certainly correctly, believed that Steiner was not giving him the respect that
he deserved. He retaliated in a severe manner, making unreasonable demands of Steiner that [1]:-

... even a soldier subject to military discipline could hardly be expected to accept.
Despite the bad atmosphere, Steiner managed to carry out some outstanding mathematical
research while teaching at the Technical School. He was promoted to senior master in 1829. We
have already mentions that Steiner became friendly with Jacobi, but he also became friendly with
other influential mathematicians in Berlin. Perhaps most important of these was August Crelle but
his friendship with Niels Abel after he arrived in Berlin in 1826 was also significant. Steiner became
an early contributor to Crelle's Journal, the Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik,
which was the first journal devoted entirely to mathematics founded. The first volume of the
journal appeared in 1826 and contains Steiner's first long work, Einige geometrische
Betrachtungen Ⓣ . This paper is important as being the first published systematic account of the
theory of the power of a point with respect to a circle, and the points of similitude of circles. It is
also important for Steiner's use of the principle of inversion in many of the proofs. This paper was
the first of 62 papers which Steiner published in Crelle's Journal. In his paper Several laws
governing the division of planes and space, which also appeared in the first volume of Crelle's
Journal, he considers the problem: What is the maximum number of parts into which a space can
be divided by n planes? It is a beautiful problem and has the solution (n3 + 5n + 6)/6. See [3] for a
solution.

In 1832 Steiner published his first book Systematische Entwicklung der Abhangigkeit geometrischer
Gestalten voneinander Ⓣ. Much of the material had already appeared in Steiner's papers over the
preceding six years. The Preface of this book gives an interesting view of Steiner's approach to
mathematics in general and the geometric material of book in particular:-

The present work is an attempt to discover the organism through which the most varied spatial
phenomena are linked with one another. There exist a limited number of very simple fundamental
relationships that together constitute the schema by means of which the remaining theorems can
be developed logically and without difficulty. Through the proper adoption of the few basic relations
one becomes master of the entire field. Order replaces chaos: and one sees how all the parts mesh
naturally, arrange themselves in the most beautiful order, and form well-defined groups. In this
manner one obtains, simultaneously, the elements from which nature starts when, with the greatest
possible economy and in the simplest way, it endows the figures with infinitely many properties.
Here the main thing is neither the synthetic nor the analytic method, but the discovery of the mutual
dependence of the figures and of the way in which their properties are carried over from the simple
to the more complex ones. This connection and transition is the real source of all the remaining
individual propositions of geometry. Properties of figures the very existence of which one previously
had to be convinced through ingenious demonstrations and which, when found, stood as something
marvellous, are now revealed as necessary consequences of the common properties of these newly
discovered basic elements, and the former are established a priori by the latter.
Soon Steiner was being honoured for his remarkable achievements. He was awarded an honorary
doctorate by the University of Königsberg on 20 April 1833 on the recommendation of Jacobi,
then elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on 5 June 1834. He was appointed to a new
extraordinary professorship of geometry at the University of Berlin on 8 October 1834. The post
had been specially created for him by Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt; he held it until his
death. He was in Rome in 1844 and on this visit he spent his time investigating a fourth order
surface of the third class now called the 'Roman surface' or 'Steiner surface'. He spent the winter
of 1854-55 in Paris and during his stay there was elected to the Académie des Sciences.

He was one of the greatest contributors to projective geometry. He discovered the 'Steiner
surface' which has a double infinity of conic sections on it. The 'Steiner theorem' states that the
two pencils by which a conic is projected from two of its points are projectively related. Another
famous result is the 'Poncelet-Steiner theorem' which shows that only one given circle and a straight
edge are required for Euclidean constructions. This was basically the topic of his second book Die
geometrischen Konstructionen ausgefuhrt mittelst der geraden Linie and eines festen
Kreises Ⓣ(1833). The proof, essentially as given by Steiner, is reproduced in [3]. Many of his
publications involved an investigation of conic sections and surfaces. For example he considered the
problem: Of all ellipses that can be circumscribed about (inscribed in) a given triangle, which one
has the smallest (largest) area? Today these ellipses are called the 'Steiner ellipses'.

In a short paper of fundamental importance written in 1848 entitled Allgemeine Eigenschaften

algebraischer Curven Ⓣhe discussed polar curves of a point with respect to a given curve. He also
introduced Steiner curves, discussed tangents at points of inflection, double tangents, cusps and
double points. In particular he indicated the resulting relationships for the twenty-eight double
tangents of the fourth degree curve. This wealth of material is presented, however, without any
indication of the proofs which Steiner had found. Otto Hesse described these results saying:-

... they are, like Fermat's theorems, riddles for the present and future generations.
Complete proofs of all the results in this paper were found by Luigi Cremona and published in his
book on algebraic curves.

Steiner disliked algebra and analysis and believed that calculation replaces thinking while geometry
stimulates thinking. He was described by Thomas Hirst as follows:-

He is a middle-aged man, of pretty stout proportions, has a long intellectual face, with beard and
moustache and a fine prominent forehead, hair dark rather inclining to turn grey. The first thing that
strikes you on his face is a dash of care and anxiety, almost pain, as if arising from physical suffering
- he has rheumatism. He never prepares his lectures beforehand. He thus often stumbles or fails to
prove what he wishes at the moment, and at every such failure he is sure to make some
characteristic remark.
Jacobi wrote of his friend Steiner:-

Starting from a few spatial properties Steiner attempted, by means of simple schema, to attain a
comprehensive view of the multitude of geometric theorems that had been rent asunder. He sought
to assign each its special position in relation to the others, to bring order to chaos, to interlock all
parts according to nature, and to assemble them into well-defined groups. In discovering the
organism through which the most varied phenomena of space are linked, he not only furthered the
development of a geometric synthesis; he also provided a model of a complete method and
execution for all other branches of mathematics.
Despite being a mathematical genius, in other ways Steiner was a difficult person. Burckhardt
writes [1]:-
Students and contemporaries wrote of the brilliance of Steiner's geometric research and of the fiery
temperament he displayed in leading others into the new territory he had discovered. Combined
with this were very liberal political views. Moreover, he often behaved crudely and spoke bluntly,
thereby alienating a number of people.
The last ten years of Steiner's life were increasingly difficult through illness. Kidney problems
caused him to spend most of the year in his native Switzerland, only going to Berlin in the
winter to deliver his lectures. Eventually he became totally bedridden and was unable to carry
out any teaching duties. Steiner never married and, perhaps as a consequence, left a fortune on
his death. One third of this fortune went to the Berlin Academy to found the Steiner Prize. The
rest of the money was divided between his relatives and the school in his native village of
Utzenstorf. His last wish was that poor children in his home town could have a better educational
opportunity than he himself had.

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

Jakob Steiner, (born March 18, 1796, Utzenstorf, Switzerland—died April 1, 1863, Bern),
Swiss mathematician who was one of the founders of modern synthetic and projective
geometry.
As the son of a small farmer, Steiner had no early schooling and did not learn to write until
he was 14. Against the wishes of his parents, at 18 he entered the Pestalozzi School at
Yverdon, Switzerland, where his extraordinary geometric intuition was discovered. Later
he went to the University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin to study, supporting
himself precariously as a tutor. By 1824 he had studied the geometric transformations that
led him to the theory of inversive geometry, but he did not publish this work. The founding
in 1826 of the first regular publication devoted to mathematics, Crelle’s Journal, gave
Steiner an opportunity to publish some of his other original geometric discoveries. In 1832
he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg, and two
years later he occupied the chair of geometry established for him at Berlin, a post
he held until his death.
During his lifetime some considered Steiner the greatest geometer since Apollonius of
Perga (c. 262–190 BCE), and his works on synthetic geometry were
considered authoritative. He had an extreme dislike for the use of algebra and analysis,
and he often expressed the opinion that calculation hampered thinking, whereas pure
geometry stimulated creative thought. By the end of the century, however, it was generally
recognized that Karl von Staudt (1798–1867), who worked in relative isolation at the
University of Erlangen, had made far deeper contributions to a systematic theory of pure
geometry. Nevertheless, Steiner contributed many basic concepts and results in projective
geometry. For example, during a trip to Rome in 1844 he discovered a transformation of
the real projective plane (the set of lines through the origin in ordinary three-dimensional
space) that maps each line of the projective plane to one point on the Steiner
surface (also known as the Roman surface). Steiner never published these and other
findings concerning the surface. A colleague, Karl Weierstrass, first published a paper on
the surface and Steiner’s results in 1863, the year of Steiner’s death. Steiner’s other
work was primarily on the properties of algebraic curves and surfaces and on the
solution of isoperimetric problems. His collected writings were published posthumously
as Gesammelte Werke, 2 vol. (1881–82; “Collected Works”).
On March 18 , 1796 , Swiss mathematician Jakob Steiner was born. Steiner ‘s work was mainly confined
to geometry . Moreover, he has been considered the greatest pure geometer since Apollonius of Perga .

“Calculating replaces, while geometry stimulates, thinking”

-Jakob Steiner (1796-1863)

Early Years

Steiner was the son of a small farmer, attended the local village school, where he learned to write only at the age of
fourteen, and at the age of seventeen went to Yverdon to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi , at whose institution he later
worked as an assistant teacher for some time. When this was closed, he moved to Heidelberg in 1818 to study
mathematics with Ferdinand Schweins (1780-1856), among others, but due to the poorness of the lectures there he
was almost entirely dependent on self-study. He financed his living by private lessons. The lectures on algebra,
differential and integral calculus stimulated investigations into mechanics, which he recorded in his compendia in
1821, 1824 and 1825. From the winter of 1820/21 he lived in Berlin, initially as a private teacher of mathematics, and
was soon regarded as the best private teacher in the city.

Academic Life

During this time Steiner published some papers on geometrical problems in Crelles Journal für die reine und
angewandte Mathematik. Then he was a teacher at the Plamann educational institution, which was influenced by
Pestalozzi’s pedagogy. From 1827 Steiner worked at the Gewerbeakademie (Oberlehrer, from 1833 with professor
title). Steiner became acquainted with several influential scientists, who supported his career like A. L. Crelle [6] or N.
H. Abel .[7] In 1832, he published his Systematische Entwickelungen and earned himself a great reputation. Through
the influence of Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi [8] and of the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt a new chair
of geometry was founded for him at the University of Berlin in 1834. He held this position for the rest of his life as a
full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He spent the last years of his life in Switzerland, tormented by
severe physical ailments.

Steiner’s Love for Geometry

Steiner devoted most of his mathematical work to geometry and tried to avoid analysis as much as he could,
since he hated it. His research became known for its great generality, the fertility of his resources, and for the rigour
in his proofs. Jakob Steiner was soon widely considered as the greatest pure geometer since Apollonius of Perga. In
his work “Systematische Entwickelung der Abhängigkeit geometrischer Gestalten von einander“, he laid the
foundation of modern synthetic geometry and introduced what are now called the geometrical forms. Between
their elements, Steiner managed to establish a one-to-one correspondence, or, made them projective, as he referred
to it. Furtherly, he gave by aid of these projective rows and pencils a new generation of conics and ruled quadric
surfaces, which leads quicker and more directly than former methods into the inner nature of conics and reveals to
the organic connection of their innumerable properties and mysteries. Also, for the first time the principle of duality
introduced from the very beginning as an immediate outflow of the most fundamental properties of the plane, the line
and the point can be seen.

Geometric Constructions and the Poncelet-Steiner Theorem

Another important work by Steiner was “Die geometrischen Constructionen ausgeführt mittels der geraden Linie und
eines festen Kreises“, which was published in 1833. The work was influenced by J V. Poncelet [9] and in it, Steiner
showed how all problems of the second order can be solved by aid of the straight edge alone without the use of
compasses as soon as one circle is given on the drawing-paper. Another famous result is the ‘Poncelet-Steiner
theorem’ which shows that only one given circle and a straight edge are required for Euclidean constructions. [10] A
posthumously published work was his “Vorlesungen über synthetische Geometrie“. However, next to his scientific
books, Steiner authored numerous papers, which were later published in Crelle’s Journal. Especially the one’s
concerning algebraic curves and surfaces were the most influential to later mathematicians. Futher very important
research, published by the Swiss mathematician was his work on maxima and minima, which surpassed contemporary
scientists significantly. Known is his geometric solution of the isoperimetric problem (to show that the circle is the
curve that encloses the largest content at a given circumference).

Steiner as a Teacher

In his lectures Steiner attached great importance to the formation of geometric views, which was also an important
topic of Pestalozzi pedagogy. In order to promote this view, Steiner refrained from using geometric figures in his
lectures. A further characteristic, which came from the school of Pestalozzi, was the responsiveness to the needs of
the pupils, who were supposed to discover mathematical knowledge as far as possible by themselves, whereby the
teacher only indicates the direction, similar to the Socratic method or the Moore method later influential in the USA.
Steiner demanded a lot from his students, there was often a harsh tone and he was not easily satisfied, yet he could
gather a circle of loyal students around him.

Later Years

The last ten years of Steiner’s life were increasingly difficult through illness. Kidney problems caused him to spend
most of the year in his native Switzerland, only going to Berlin in the winter to deliver his lectures. Eventually he
became totally bedridden and was unable to carry out any teaching duties. Jakob Steiner passed away on April 1,
1863, at age 67.

At yovisto academic video search you may be interested in a video lecture on “Steiner’s regions of space problem” by
n. J. Wildberger.

Steiner was born in the village of Utzenstorf, Canton of Bern. At 18, he became a pupil of Heinrich Pestalozzi and
afterwards studied at Heidelberg. Then, he went to Berlin, earning a livelihood there, as in Heidelberg, by tutoring.
Here he became acquainted with A. L. Crelle, who, encouraged by his ability and by that of Niels Henrik Abel, then
also staying at Berlin, founded his famous Journal (1826).
After Steiner's publication (1832) of his Systematische Entwickelungen he received, through Carl Gustav Jacob
Jacobi, who was then professor at Königsberg University, and earned an honorary degree there; and through the
influence of Jacobi and of the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt a new chair of geometry was founded
for him at Berlin (1834). This he occupied until his death in Bern on 1 April 1863.
He was described by Thomas Hirst as follows:
"He is a middle-aged man, of pretty stout proportions, has a long intellectual face, with beard and moustache
and a fine prominent forehead, hair dark rather inclining to turn grey. The first thing that strikes you on his
face is a dash of care and anxiety, almost pain, as if arising from physical suffering—he has rheumatism. He
never prepares his lectures beforehand. He thus often stumbles or fails to prove what he wishes at the
moment, and at every such failure he is sure to make some characteristic remark."

Mathematical contributions[edit]
Steiner's mathematical work was mainly confined to geometry. This he treated synthetically, to the total
exclusion of analysis, which he hated,[1] and he is said to have considered it a disgrace to synthetic geometry if
equal or higher results were obtained by analytical geometry methods. In his own field he surpassed all his
contemporaries. His investigations are distinguished by their great generality, by the fertility of his resources,
and by the rigour in his proofs. He has been considered the greatest pure geometer since Apollonius of Perga.
In his Systematische Entwickelung der Abhängigkeit geometrischer Gestalten von einander he laid the
foundation of modern synthetic geometry. He introduces what are now called the geometrical forms
(the row, flat pencil, etc.), and establishes between their elements a one-to-one correspondence, or, as he calls
it, makes them projective. He next gives by aid of these projective rows and pencils a new generation
of conics and ruled quadric surfaces, which leads quicker and more directly than former methods into the inner
nature of conics and reveals to us the organic connection of their innumerable properties and mysteries. In this
 work also, of which only one volume appeared instead of the projected five, we see for the first time the principle
of duality introduced from the very beginning as an immediate outflow of the most fundamental properties of the
plane, the line and the point.
In a second little volume, Die geometrischen Constructionen ausgeführt mittels der geraden Linie und eines
festen Kreises (1833), republished in 1895 by Ottingen, he shows, what had been already suggested by J. V.
Poncelet, how all problems of the second order can be solved by aid of the straight edge alone without the use
of compasses, as soon as one circle is given on the drawing-paper. He also wrote "Vorlesungen über
synthetische Geometrie", published posthumously at Leipzig by C. F. Geiser and H. Schroeter in 1867; a third
edition by R. Sturm was published in 1887-1898.
Other geometric results by Steiner include development of a formula for the partitioning of space by planes (the
maximal number of parts created by n planes), several theorems about the famous Steiner's chain of tangential
circles, and a proof of the isoperimetric theorem (later a flaw was found in the proof, but was corrected by
Weierstrass).
The rest of Steiner's writings are found in numerous papers mostly published in Crelle's Journal, the first volume
of which contains his first four papers. The most important are those relating to algebraic curves and surfaces,
especially the short paper Allgemeine Eigenschaften algebraischer Curven. This contains only results, and there
is no indication of the method by which they were obtained, so that, according to L. O. Hosse, they are,
like Fermat's theorems, riddles to the present and future generations. Eminent analysts succeeded in proving
some of the theorems, but it was reserved to Luigi Cremona to prove them all, and that by a uniform synthetic
method, in his book on algebraic curves.
Other important investigations relate to maxima and minima. Starting from simple elementary propositions,
Steiner advances to the solution of problems which analytically require the calculus of variations, but which at
the time altogether surpassed the powers of that calculus. Connected with this is the paper Vom
Krümmungsschwerpuncte ebener Curven, which contains numerous properties of pedals and roulettes,
especially of their areas.
Steiner also made a small but important contribution to combinatorics. In 1853, Steiner published a two pages
article in Crelle's Journal on what nowadays is called Steiner systems, a basic kind of block design.
His oldest papers and manuscripts (1823-1826) were published by his admirer Fritz Bützberger on the request
of the Bernese Society for Natural Scientists
In Euclidean geometry, the Poncelet–Steiner theorem is one of several results concerning compass and
straightedge constructions with additional restrictions. This result states that whatever can be constructed
by straightedge and compass together can be constructed by straightedge alone, provided that a single circle and
its centre are given.

In enumerative geometry, Steiner's conic problem is the problem of finding the number (3264) of smooth
conics tangent to five given conics in the complex plane in general position. It is named after Jakob
Steiner who gave an incorrect solution in 1848.
The space of (possibly degenerate) conics in the complex plane can be identified with the projective space P5.
Steiner observed that the conics tangent to a given conic form a degree 6 hypersurface in P5. So the conics tangent
to 5 given conics correspond to the intersection points of 5 degree 6 hypersurfaces, and by Bézout's theorem the
number of intersection points of 5 generic degree 6 hypersurfaces is 65 = 7776, which was Steiner's incorrect
solution. The reason this is wrong is that the five degree 6 hypersurfaces are not in general position and have a
common intersection in the Veronese surface, corresponding to the set of double lines in the plane, all of which
have double intersection points with the 5 conics. In particular the intersection of these 5 hypersurfaces is not even
0-dimensional but has a 2-dimensional component. So to find the correct answer, one has to somehow eliminate the
plane of spurious degenerate conics from this calculation.
One way of eliminating the degenerate conics is to blow up P5 along the Veronese surface. The Chow ring of the
blowup is generated by H and E, where H is the total transform of a hyperplane and E is the exceptional divisor. The
total transform of a degree 6 hypersurface is 6H, and Steiner calculated (6H)5 = 65P as H5=P (where P is the class of
a point in the Chow ring). However the number of conics is not (6H)5 but (6H−2E)5 because the strict transform of
the hypersurface of conics tangent to a given conic is 6H−2E.
Suppose that L = 2H−E is the strict transform of the conics tangent to a given line. Then the intersection numbers
of H and L are given by H5=1P, H4L=2P, H3L2=4P, H2L3=4P, H1L4=2P, L5=1P. So we have (6H−2E)5 = (2H+2L)5 =
3264P.
Fulton & Macpherson (1978) gave a precise description of exactly what "general position" means. (However their
two propositions about this are not quite right, and are corrected in a note on page 29 of their paper.) If the five
conics have the properties that

 there is no line such that every one of the 5 conics is either tangent to it or passes through one of two fixed
points on it (otherwise there is a "double line with 2 marked points" tangent to all 5 conics)
 no three of the conics pass through any point (otherwise there is a "double line with 2 marked points" tangent to
all 5 conics passing through this triple intersection point)
 no two of the conics are tangent
 no three of the five conics are tangent to a line
 a pair of lines each tangent to two of the conics do not intersect on the fifth conic (otherwise this pair is a
degenerate conic tangent to all 5 conics)
then the total number of conics C tangent to all 5 (counted with multiplicities) is 3264. Here the multiplicity is given
by the product over all 5 conics Ci of (4 − number of intersection points of C and Ci). In particular if C intersects each
of the five conics in eactly 3 points (one double point of tangency and two others) then the multiplicity is 1, and if this
condition always holds then there are exactly 3264 conics tangent to the 5 given conics.
Over other algebraically closed fields the answer is similar, unless the field has characteristic 2 in which case the
number of conics is 51 rather than 3264.

Steiner's problem, asked and answered by Steiner (1850), is the problem of finding the maximum of the function

[1]

It is named after Jakob Steiner.

The maximum is at , where e denotes the base of natural logarithms. One can determine that by solving the
equivalent problem of maximizing

The derivative of can be calculated to be

It follows that is positive for and negative for , which implies that (and therefore ) increases

for and decreases for Thus, is the unique global maximum of

James Clerk Maxwell, (born June 13, 1831, Edinburgh, Scotland—died November 5,
1879, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England), Scottish physicist best known for his
formulation of electromagnetic theory. He is regarded by most modern physicists as
the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence on 20th-century physics,
and he is ranked with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for the fundamental nature of
his contributions. In 1931, on the 100th anniversary of Maxwell’s birth, Einstein described
the change in the conception of reality in physics that resulted from Maxwell’s work as “the
most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of
Newton.” The concept of electromagnetic radiation originated with Maxwell, and
his field equations, based on Michael Faraday’s observations of the electric and magnetic lines of
force, paved the way for Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which established the equivalence of
mass and energy. Maxwell’s ideas also ushered in the other major innovation of 20th-century
physics, the quantumtheory. His description of electromagnetic radiation led to the development
(according to classical theory) of the ultimately unsatisfactory law of heat radiation, which
prompted Max Planck’s formulation of the quantum hypothesis—i.e., the theory that radiant-heat
energy is emitted only in finite amounts, or quanta. The interaction between electromagnetic
radiation and matter, integral to Planck’s hypothesis, in turn has played a central role in the
development of the theory of the structure of atoms and molecules.

Early Life
Maxwell came from a comfortable middle-class background. The original family name was Clerk,
the additional surname being added by his father, who was a lawyer, after he had inherited the
Middlebie estate from Maxwell ancestors. James was an only child. His parents had married late in
life, and his mother was 40 years old at his birth. (See Researcher’s Note: Maxwell’s date of birth.)
Shortly afterward the family moved from Edinburgh to Glenlair, the country house on the
Middlebie estate.

Maxwell’s interests ranged far beyond the school syllabus, and he did not pay particular
attention to examination performance. His first scientific paper, published when he
was only 14 years old, described a generalized series of oval curves that could be
traced with pins and thread by analogy with an ellipse. This fascination
with geometry and with mechanical models continued throughout his career and
was of great help in his subsequent research.
At age 16 he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he read voraciously on all
subjects and published two more scientific papers. In 1850 he went to the University of
Cambridge, where his exceptional powers began to be recognized.
His mathematics teacher, William Hopkins, was a well-known “wrangler maker” (a
wrangler is one who takes first-class honours in the mathematics examinations at
Cambridge) whose students included Tait, George Gabriel (later Sir George)
Stokes, William Thomson (later Baron Kelvin), Arthur Cayley, and Edward John Routh. Of
Maxwell, Hopkins is reported to have said that he was the most extraordinary man he had
ever met, that it seemed impossible for him to think wrongly on any physical subject, but
that in analysis he was far more deficient. (Other contemporaries also testified to
Maxwell’s preference for geometrical over analytical methods.) This
shrewd assessment was later borne out by several important formulas advanced by
Maxwell that obtained correct results from faulty mathematical arguments.
In 1854 Maxwell was second wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman (the Smith’s Prize is a
prestigious competitive award for an essay that incorporates original research). He was
elected to a fellowship at Trinity, but, because his father’s health was deteriorating, he
wished to return to Scotland. In 1856 he was appointed to the professorship of natural
philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but before the appointment was announced
his father died. This was a great personal loss, for Maxwell had had a close relationship
with his father. In June 1858 Maxwell married Katherine Mary Dewar, daughter of the
principal of Marischal College. The union was childless and was described by his
biographer as a “married life…of unexampled devotion.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831 – 1879) was a Scottish scientist who is most famous for his classical theory of
electromagnetic radiation, which for the first time brought together electricity, magnetism and light as different
manifestations of the same phenomenon. This unification by Maxwell is considered a scientific
landmark comparable to the work done by Isaac Newton andAlbert Einstein. In fact, when Einstein was asked
if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, he replied: “No, I stand on Maxwell’s shoulders.” Maxwell, through
his equations of electromagnetism, paved the way for major technological innovations including the television
and the microwave. Apart from his work in electromagnetism, Maxwell accurately described the reason for
the stability of Rings of Saturn; made important contributions to Colour Theory in Optics; and wrote the
founding paper on the field of cybernetics. Know more about the achievements of one of the giants of physics
through his 10 major contributions to science.

#1 MAXWELL GAVE MATHEMATICAL FORM TO FARADAY’S WORK IN

ELECTROMAGNETISM

In 1820, Danish physicist Hans Christian Orsted discovered that flow of electric current through a wire
produced a magnetic field. English scientist Michael Faraday built on this discovery to devise a number
of unique, inventive ways to test and explore electromagnetic phenomena; and made several
important discoveries regarding the nature of electromagnetism. Maxwell, one of the finest
mathematicians of his time, unified the then disparate science of electromagnetism into a coherent
theory, complete with mathematical formalism. As early as 1855 when he was only 24, he produced a
paper titled “On Faraday’s lines of force”, in which he presented a simplified model of Faraday’s work;
and explained how electricity and magnetism are related. Maxwell reduced all of the current knowledge
in the field into a linked set of differential equations with 20 equations in 20 variables. In 1881, British
physicist Oliver Heaviside reduced 12 of these 20 equations into four differential equations, known
now collectively as Maxwell’s equations.

#8 HE WAS THE FIRST TO APPLY PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS TO THE KINETIC

THEORY OF GASES
Maxwell investigated the kinetic theory of gases, which had been advanced by the efforts of several
scientists. He was the first to apply the methods of probability and statistics in describing the properties
of an assembly of molecules. Maxwell realized that all gas particles would not move at the same speed,
as assumed at that time. This was because collisions between themwould speed some of them up and
slow some of them down. Maxwell showed that particles in a gas would have a particular statistical
distribution, known subsequently as the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution after him and Austrian
physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution applies to the classical ideal gas.
There are various effects in real gases which makes their speed distribution different. However,
rarefied gases at ordinary temperatures behave very nearly like an ideal gas and Maxwell–Boltzmann
distribution is an excellent approximation for such gases. Thus, it forms the basis of the kinetic theory of
gases.

James Clerk Maxwell Biography

James Maxwell was one of the world’s most influential physicists. In particular, he made great strides
in helping to understand electromagnetism and produced a unified model of electromagnetism. His
research in kinetics and electricity laid the foundations for modern Quantum mechanics and special
relativity.

“The work of James Clerk Maxwell changed the world forever.”

– Albert Einstein
Jean-Victor Poncelet, (born July 1, 1788, Metz, France—died December 22, 1867,
Paris), French mathematician and engineer who was one of the founders of
modern projective geometry.
As a lieutenant of engineers in 1812, he took part in Napoleon’s Russian campaign,
in which he was abandoned as dead at Krasnoy and imprisoned at Saratov; he
returned to France in 1814. During his imprisonment Poncelet studied projective
geometry and wrote Applications d’analyse et de géométrie, 2 vol. (1862–64;
“Applications of Analysis and Geometry”). This work was originally planned as an
introduction to his celebrated Traité des propriétés projectives des figures (1822; “Treatise
on the Projective Properties of Figures”), for which Poncelet is regarded as one of the
greatest projective geometers. His development of the pole and polar lines associated
with conic sections led to the principle of duality (exchanging “dual” elements, such as
points and lines, along with their corresponding statements, in a true theorem produces a
true “dual statement”) and a dispute over priority with the German mathematician Julius
Plücker for its discovery. His principle of continuity, a concept designed to add generality
to synthetic geometry (limited to geometric arguments), led to the introduction of imaginary
points (see complex numbers) and the development of algebraic geometry.
From 1815 to 1825 Poncelet was occupied with military engineering at Metz, and from
1825 to 1835 he was a professor of mechanics at the École d’Application there. He
applied mathematics to the improvement of turbines and waterwheels. Although the first
inward-flow turbine was not built until 1838, he proposed such a turbine in 1826.
In Paris from 1838 to 1848 he was a professor at the Faculty of Sciences, and from 1848
to 1850 he was commandant of the École Polytechnique, with the rank of general.

Jean-Victor Poncelet's father was Claude Poncelet, a rich landowner who was a lawyer at the
Parliament of Metz. His mother was Anne-Marie Perrein, but Jean-Victor was an illegitimate child
and, although he was born in Metz, he was sent away before he was a year old to be brought up
by the Olier family in Saint-Avold, a town to the east of Metz. We should add that much later
Claude Poncelet married Anne-Marie Perrein making Jean-Victor legitimate from that time. He
was cared for with much love and affection by the Olier family and he lived with them until 1804
when he reached the age of 15. It was a happy time for Poncelet, who showed great curiosity for
all things around him, particularly a love of mechanical objects and he spent many happy hours
playing with the mechanism of a clock which had been bought for him.

When he was fifteen years old, Poncelet returned to Metz where he studied at the lycée taking the
special classes designed to prepare students to take the entrance examinations for the École Normale
and the École Polytechnique. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1807, and there he had
outstanding teachers such as the mathematicians Gaspard Monge, Lazare Carnot, Charles
Brianchon, Sylvestre Lacroix, André-Marie Ampère, Louis Poinsot, and Jean Hachette. However his
health was poor and he missed most of his third year of study. He graduated from the École
Polytechnique in 1810 at the age of 22, older than was usual due to taking an extra year because
of his health problems, and decided on a military career. He joined the Engineering Corps and
went to Metz to study at the École d'Application. After two years of study he graduated, having
reached the rank of Lieutenant and, in March 1812, was given as a first assignment work on the
fortifications of Ramekens on the island of Walcheren in the estuary of the river Scheldt (or Escaut)
[21]:-

His first engineering work here was the erection of a casemated fort in a very limited time, on a peat
soil, without having at his command proper materials for a foundation.
However he was called away from that assignment in June 1812 to take part in Napoleon's
Russian campaign.

Poncelet joined Napoleon's army of 600,000 men at the town of Vitepsk as it was approaching Russia.
By 18 August the army was nearing Smolensk, the first genuinely Russian city, and Poncelet
reconnoitred the city despite being under fire from the defending garrison. He was actively involved
in the fighting later that day, then on the following day he was responsible for constructing bridges
over the Dnieper River below Smolensk. Not only did he have to overcome problems of constructing
bridges but he had to do so while under fire from Russian guns on the opposite bank. He devised a
plan to divert the attention of the Russians to a particular crossing point while he organised building
bridges at a different location. It was not until September 1812 that the Russian army fully engaged
with the French and were defeated at the Battle of Borodino. Poncelet spent five frustrating weeks
with the army in Moscow, then on 19 October Napoleon ordered the army to withdraw. The Russians
then attacked the retreating French army and Poncelet was left for dead on the battlefield following
the Battle of Krasnoi, not far from Smolensk, on 19 November [21]:-

In this battle, Poncelet charged the Russian batteries at the head of a column of sappers and miners;
his horse was killed under him ...
He was extremely fortunate to survive but had great hardships to come [6]:-

He was picked up by enemy soldiers only because they thought that being an officer he might be
able to give useful information. As a prisoner of war, he was forced to march for nearly five months
across frozen plains to his prison [Saratov] on the banks of the Volga. At first he was too exhausted,
cold and hungry even to think; but when the spring came ("the splendid April sun"), he resolved to
utilise his time by recalling all he could of his mathematical education. Later he was to apologise
that "deprived of books and comforts of all sorts, distressed above all by the misfortune of my
country and my own lot, I was not able to bring these studies to a proper perfection."
He was held in the prison from March 1813 to June 1814 when he returned to France. During his
imprisonment he recalled the fundamental principles of geometry but, forgetting the details of
what he had learnt from Monge, Carnot and Brianchon, he went on to
develop projective properties of conics. He called the notes that he made the 'Saratov notebook,'
but it was only fifty years later that he incorporated much of what he had written in his treatise
on analytic geometry Applications d'analyse et de géométrie Ⓣ(1862). His development of the
pole and polar lines associated with conics led to the principle of duality but this, as we explain
below, led to a priority dispute. He also discovered circular points at infinity. First we look at
what Julian Coolidge writes about Poncelet's inspired work [15]:-

The fundamental problem which Poncelet sets himself is to study the graphical properties of figures
which he defines as those which do not involve the magnitude either of distances or of angles. The
distance of two points is not projectively invariant, but in looking for projectively invariant
configurations he finds the harmonic one, and this he develops at length. ... In his second chapter
Poncelet attacks the problem of imaginary points in pure geometry with a courage and
thoroughness ahead of anything shown by his predecessors. ... he makes quite casually the historic
statement that two coplanar circles should not be looked upon as completely independent figures,
but as having two imaginary infinite points in common. Here we have the first announcement of one
of the basic principles of metrical geometry. Later Poncelet allows, without careful definition,
imaginary projections.
On 30 May 1814 the Treaty of Paris was signed making peace between France and Russia (and the
other countries involved in the conflict). A few days later Poncelet was released from Saratov
prison but it took him until September of that year before he reached France. From 1815 he
taught at Metz. He published Traité des propriétés projectives des figures Ⓣin 1822, which is a
study of those properties which remain invariant under projection. Note that the work was
subtitled "A work of utility for those studying the applications of descriptive geometry and
geometric operations on land" and here one can see the influence of Monge's teaching. This
work contains fundamental ideas of projective geometry such as the cross-ratio, perspective,
involution and the circular points at infinity. While writing this book he consulted with François
Servois who he had known while he worked at Metz but who had moved to Paris in 1816. In Traité
des propriétés projectives des figures Ⓣ, Poncelet wrote:-

If one figure is derived from another by a continuous change and the latter is as general as the
former, then any property of the first figure can be asserted at once for the second figure.
He illustrated this technique by first noting the theorem from Euclidean geometry which states
that the product of segments of intersecting chords in a circle is constant. Poncelet then used his
principle to show that if the point of intersection is considered to be outside the circle, one
obtains the theorem that the product of the secants and their external segments are constant. No
proof is required, Poncelet says, for one simply uses the Euclidean theorem and invokes his
principle of continuity. It is worth remarking that our term "projective geometry" comes from the
title of this book, which is quite appropriate since Poncelet was one of the founders of modern
projective geometry simultaneously discovered by Joseph Gergonne. Let us look briefly at Andrei
Nikolaevich Kolmogorov's description [4]:-

Poncelet showed that a conic section (conic) is a projective figure and that to solve a difficult
problem in conics, one should project the conic, solve the problem for the circle, and then carry
out the inverse projection. Since the "points of convergence" of parallel lines on the "mapped plane"
do not correspond to real points of the projective plane, Poncelet added "ideal" or "infinitely distant"
points to all planes, points that project to "points of convergence." Poncelet introduced infinitely
distant points using Carnot's principle of correlation, which he called "the principle of continuity."
Developing an idea of Carnot on "complex correlation," Poncelet introduced imaginary points of the
plane, and, in particular, imaginary infinitely distant points, such as, for example, "cyclic points" -
points belonging to all circles in the plane. Two conics can intersect in four real or imaginary points,
and two circles in two real and two cyclic points.
The principle of continuity caused some disputes. In particular Augustin-Louis Cauchy, writing a
report on Poncelet's work on 5 June 1820, claimed that the principle of continuity was "capable of
leading to manifest errors". He gave an example to show that the principle was false, but his
example was not correct. This was not the only dispute that Poncelet was involved in. Articles
appearing in Joseph Gergonne's Annales des Mathématique which used the principle of duality
gave Poncelet little credit. He protested his priority to Gergonne in December 1826 and his
comments were published in March 1827 accompanied by critical remarks added by Gergonne.
The priority dispute about duality lasted until May 1829 and also involved Julius Plücker. It pushed
Poncelet away from his work on projective geometry and towards mechanics.

From 1815 to 1825 he was a Captain of Engineers at Metz, overseeing the construction of machinery
in the arsenal at Metz and teaching mechanics in the military college. During this time François
Aragourged him to accept the position of Professor of Mechanics at Metz but for a while he hesitated.
Finally on 1 May 1824 he agreed, taking up his duties in January 1825. He held this position for ten
years. He applied mechanics to improve turbines and waterwheels more than doubling the efficiency
of the waterwheel [5]:-

Poncelet was familiar with Borda's work and the necessity for an efficient water wheel of having
water enter without velocity and leave without impact. The basic problem he faced in redesigning
the undershot wheel was how to accomplish this while retaining the practical advantages of the
traditional construction - simplicity, low construction costs, high rotational velocity. Poncelet
declared: "After having reflected on this, it seemed to me that we could fulfil this double condition
by replacing the straight blades on ordinary wheels with curved or cylindrical blades, presenting
their concavity to the current." Thus, in 1823, Poncelet took the old undershot wheel and replaced
its flat, radial blades with curved blades and angled its sluice gate to bring the water as close to the
lower blades as possible. These changes produced a wheel with all of the advantages of the
undershot wheel plus a relatively high efficiency.
These ideas were published by Poncelet in 1826 and were awarded a prize by the French
government. It is hard for us to understand how important this work was for at this time much of
industry was powered by waterwheels. He also collaborated with Arthur Morin on experiments on
friction beginning in May 1831. Their work confirmed and extended Coulomb's work on friction,
verifying the three general laws he had proposed.
Poncelet was promoted to Chef de Bataillon in 1831, and then moved to Paris in 1834 when he was
elected in March of that year to the mechanics section of the Académie des Sciences. His work on
projective geometry was too controversial, particularly following the attacks made on it earlier
by Cauchy, for him to enter the Academy on the strength of these contributions. In the following year
he become Professor of Mechanics at the Sorbonne. He served on the Committee for Fortifications
of Paris from 1835 to 1848. In 1842, Poncelet married Louise Palmyre Gaudin and his intention was
to have a quieter time, but events conspired to prevent this for several years. In 1841 he became a
Lieutenant-Colonel, then three years later became Colonel and, on 19 April 1848, a General of
Brigade. He also became director of the École Polytechnique in April 1848, holding the post until
1850. During his time in this role there occurred in Paris the "June Days Uprising" by French workers
on 23-26 June 1848. Barricades were set up and the army attacked the workers with a large loss of
life. Poncelet, as director of the École Polytechnique, led his students through the barricades to the
Luxembourg Palace where they protected the Provisional Government. Louis Eugène Cavaignac,
who had become French head of state and led the suppression of the revolt, honoured Poncelet for
his support by appointing him to take command of the National Guards of the Department of the
Seine. He was later elected to the governing assembly. In 1849 Poncelet and Arthur Morin invented
the dynamometer of rotation, which together with later refinements, became the basic investigative
tool in the study of work.

In 1851 the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was held in Hyde Park,
London. Poncelet was appointed as head of the Scientific Commission for the Exhibition. On
his return he wrote a report on progress in the applications of science in the first half of the nineteenth
century making particular mention of the English machinery and tools he had seen exhibited.
Prompted by the Great Exhibition of 1851, the French organised the first Universal Exhibition which
opened in Paris in May 1855. Poncelet also played an important role in this Exhibition.

Poncelet published many articles on geometry and mechanics in addition to those we have
mentioned, particularly in Gergonne's Annales des Mathématique and Crelle's Journal. The lectures
he gave at Metz were first produced in lithographed form then, after a series of versions, were
eventually published. For example the course on Mechanics Applied to Machines appeared first as
lithographed notes in 1826, again as a second version in 1832, then a third definitive version with the
assistance of his friend Arthur Morin in 1836. The notes were not properly published, however, until
1874. The course notes Mécanique industrielle Ⓣ
went through a similar process. He also wrote many reports and memoirs which were published in
the Mémorial du Génie and the Avis du Comité des Fortifications. For example we
mention Sustaining Walls; Geometrical Constructions to Determine Their Thickness Under Various
Circumstances: Geometrical Constructions to Determine Their Thickness Under Various
Circumstances (1845), and Memoir Upon the Stability of Revetments and of Their Foundations.
Publications following his retirement in 1850 include Applications d'analyse et de géométrie Ⓣin
two volumes: 1862 and 1864. He also published a second edition of Traité des propriétés projectives
des figures Ⓣin 1865-66 which was reprinted in 1995. Here is a list of the contents of this second
edition:

(1) General principles (consisting of Preliminary notions of central projection; Preliminary notions
on secants and ideal chords of conic sections; and Principles related to projection of plane figures).
(2) Fundamental properties of straight lines, circles, and conic sections (consisting of Geometry of
ruler and transversals; Figures inscribed in and circumscribed around conic sections. Reciprocal poles
and polars; and Similarity and homothety, centre of similarity).

(3) Systems of conic sections (consisting of Homologous figures, center and axis of homology, in
particular for conic sections; Complete systems of conic sections; and Double contact of conic
sections).

(4) On angles and polygons (this section contains the projective definition of foci of conic sections).

(5) General theory of centers of middle harmonics.

(6) General theory of reciprocal polars.

(7) Analysis of transversals applied to geometric curves and surfaces.

(8) Properties common to systems of geometric curves and surfaces of arbitrary order.

Poncelet received many honours in addition to being elected to the Academy which we
mentioned above. He was an officer of the Legion of Honour, and Chevalier of the Prussian Order.
Many academies and learned societies elected him to membership including the Royal Society of
London, the Berlin Academy of Science, the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg and
Academy of Sciences in Turin.

After a long and painful illness, Poncelet died in December 1867. In the following year the Prix
Poncelet was endowed by his wife in carrying out Poncelet's dying wish that the sciences be
advanced. The prize, augmented by a further sum of money, was awarded for work in pure
mathematics or mechanics by the Academy of Sciences from 1876. His unpublished manuscripts
survived until World War I when they vanished and have not been traced since. Sadly it is highly
likely that they were destroyed at this time.

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

Jean-Victor Poncelet
Jean-Victor Poncelet (July 1, 1788 – December 22, 1867) was a French mathematician, specifically a
geometer, and mechanic. He is best known for his revival of projective geometry, though he has
many other contributions in the field of geometry. As a mechanic and physicist, he improved the
design of the waterwheel in his home town of Metz.

Biography
Poncelet was born on July 1, 1788, the illegitimate son of Claude de Poncelet, a lawyer in the local
Parliament, and a well-to-do landowner. Poncelet attended local schools in his home town before going to
the prestigious French academy called the Ecole Polytechnique in 1808, and then in 1810 at a local
university before graduating.
After graduation in 1810, he served in the army as a military engineer for a short while. He was captured
during a battle against the Russians, and was held captive a few years. During this time, he wrote his
most famous work, Traité des propriétés projectives des figures, which played a large role in the revival of
projective geometry that Poncelet is famous for.
After being released by the Russians, Poncelet became a professor of mechanics at the local university
he had attended. He worked on waterwheel design during his tenure at the university. Poncelet switched
positions to become the commandant of the Ecole Polytechnique in 1848, during which he wrote an
introduction to his earlier work on projective geometry. He retired in 1850, and died on December 22,
1867.
Poncelet–Steiner theorem[edit]
Main article: Poncelet–Steiner theorem
Poncelet discovered the following theorem in 1822: Euclidean compass and straightedge constructions can be
carried out using only a straightedge if a single circle and its center is given. Swiss mathematician Jakob
Steiner proved this theorem in 1833, leading to the name of the theorem. The constructions that this theorem states
are possible are known as Steiner constructions.[18]

Poncelet's porism[edit]
Main article: Poncelet's porism
In geometry, Poncelet's porism (sometimes referred to as Poncelet's closure theorem) states that whenever
a polygon is inscribed in one conic section and circumscribes another one, the polygon must be part of an infinite
family of polygons that are all inscribed in and circumscribe the same two conics.[19][20]

Jean-Victor Poncelet (1 July 1788 – 22 December 1867) was a French engineer and mathematician who served
most notably as the Commanding General of the École Polytechnique. He is considered a reviver of projective
geometry, and his work Traité des propriétés projectives des figures is considered the first definitive text on the
subject since Gérard Desargues' work on it in the 17th century. He later wrote an introduction to it: Applications
d’analyse et de géométrie.[3]
As a mathematician, his most notable work was in projective geometry, although an early collaboration with Charles
Julien Brianchonprovided a significant contribution to Feuerbach's theorem. He also made discoveries
about projective harmonic conjugates; relating these to the poles and polar lines associated with conic sections. He
developed the concept of parallel lines meeting at a point at infinityand defined the circular points at infinity that are
on every circle of the plane. These discoveries led to the principle of duality, and the principle of continuity and also
aided in the development of complex numbers.[3]
As a military engineer, he served in Napoleon's campaign against the Russian Empire in 1812, in which he was
captured and held prisoner until 1814. Later, he served as a professor of mechanics at the École d’application in his
home town of Metz, during which time he published Introduction à la mécanique industrielle, a work he is famous
for, and improved the design of turbines and water wheels. In 1837, a tenured 'Chaire de mécanique physique et
expérimentale' was specially created for him at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris).[4] In 1848, he became the
commanding general of his alma mater, the École Polytechnique.[3] He is honoured by having his name listed among
notable French engineers and scientists displayed around the first stage of the Eiffel tower.