David Rytz von Brugg (1 April 1801, in Bucheggberg – 25 March 1868, in Aarau) was a Swiss

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

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

Life

Rytz von Brugg was son of a

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in partic ...

and studied mathematics at

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

and

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. He had teaching positions at various cities, one of them 1835 until 1862 at Aarau, where he was ''„Professor der Mathematik an der Gewerbeschule zu Aarau“''.Alexander Ostermann, Gerhard Wanner: ''Geometry by Its History.'' 2012, S. 69

Merits

Rytz von Brugg is famous for a geometrical method which is known as Rytz’s axis construction. This classical procedure retrieves the semi-axes of an Ellipse from any pair of

conjugate diameters In geometry, two diameters of a conic section are said to be conjugate if each chord (geometry), chord parallel (geometry), parallel to one diameter is bisection, bisected by the other diameter. For example, two diameters of a circle are conjugate ...

. This method is known since 1845, when it was published within a paper by Leopold Moosbrugger.Siegfried Gottwald, Hans-Joachim Ilgauds, Karl-Heinz Schlote (Hrsg.): ''Lexikon bedeutender Mathematiker.'' 1990, S. 407Emil Müller und Erwin Kruppa ''Lehrbuch der darstellenden Geometrie.'' 1961, S. 98 .

Sources

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MR1089881
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rytz, David 1801 births 1868 deaths Swiss mathematicians