Albert Victor Bäcklund (11 January 1845 – 23 February 1922) was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
. He was a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
at
Lund University
, motto = Ad utrumque
, mottoeng = Prepared for both
, established =
, type = Public research university
, budget = SEK 9 billion rector
Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to:
Style or title
*Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations
*Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...
from 1907 to 1909.
He was born in Malmöhus County, now Skåne County, in southern Sweden and became a student at the nearby
University of Lund
, motto = Ad utrumque
, mottoeng = Prepared for both
, established =
, type = Public research university
, budget = SEK 9 billion observatory, and received his Ph.D. in 1868 working on methods to obtain the
latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...
of a place by astronomical observations. He was awarded the title of associate professor in Mechanics and
Mathematical Physics
Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The '' Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developme ...
in 1878, and elected Fellow of the
Swedish Academy of Science
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for prom ...
in 1888. In 1897 he became a full professor.
In 1874 he was awarded a travel grant to study abroad for six months. He went to the universities at
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
and
Erlangen
Erlangen (; East Franconian: ''Erlang'', Bavarian: ''Erlanga'') is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 116,062 inhab ...
to work with
Felix Klein
Christian Felix Klein (; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work with group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the associations between geometry and grou ...
and
Ferdinand von Lindemann
Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann (12 April 1852 – 6 March 1939) was a German mathematician, noted for his proof, published in 1882, that (pi) is a transcendental number, meaning it is not a root of any polynomial with rational coefficien ...
.
His most important work was in the field of transformations pioneered by
Sophus Lie
Marius Sophus Lie ( ; ; 17 December 1842 – 18 February 1899) was a Norwegian mathematician. He largely created the theory of continuous symmetry and applied it to the study of geometry and differential equations.
Life and career
Marius Soph ...
. He improved greatly the understanding of contact transformations and introduced a new second class transformation, now known as auto-Bäcklund transformation.
See also
*
Bäcklund transform In mathematics, Bäcklund transforms or Bäcklund transformations (named after the Swedish mathematician Albert Victor Bäcklund) relate partial differential equations and their solutions. They are an important tool in soliton theory and integrabl ...
non-Euclidean geometry
In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean g ...