Erhard Scholz (born 1947) is a German historian of mathematics with interests in the history of mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries, historical perspective on the philosophy of mathematics and science, and
Hermann Weyl's geometrical methods applied to gravitational theory.
Education and career
Scholz studied mathematics at the
University of Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...
and the
University of Warwick
, mottoeng = Mind moves matter
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £7.0 million (2021)
, budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...
from 1968 to 1975 with ''
Diplom'' from the University of Bonn in 1975.
[ In 1979, he completed his doctorate (]Promotion
Promotion may refer to:
Marketing
* Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...
) at the University of Bonn with thesis ''Entwicklung des Mannigfaltigkeitsbegriffs von Riemann bis Poincaré'' (Development of the concept of manifold from Riemann
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (; 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rig ...
to Poincaré) under the supervision of Egbert Brieskorn
Egbert Valentin Brieskorn (7 July 1936, in Rostock – 11 July 2013, in Bonn) was a German mathematician who introduced Brieskorn spheres and the Brieskorn–Grothendieck resolution.
Education
Brieskorn was born in 1936 as the son of a mill cons ...
and Henk J. M. Bos
Hendrik Jan Maarten "Henk" Bos (born 17 July 1940, Enschede) is a Dutch historian of mathematics.
Career
Hendrik was a student of Hans Freudenthal and Jerome Ravetz at Utrecht University and in 1973 wrote a thesis "Differentials, higher order di ...
. In 1986, Scholtz habilitated
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
at the University of Wuppertal
The University of Wuppertal (''Universität Wuppertal'') is a German scientific institution, located in Wuppertal, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
The university's official name in German is ''Bergische Universität Wuppertal'' ...
. There he became in 1989 an associate professor of the history of mathematics and retired in 2012. He also works at the University of Wuppertal's ''Interdisziplinären Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung'' (IZWT, Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Research), which he co-founded in 2004. In 1993, he was a visiting professor at the ''Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte'' (Institute for the History of Science) at the University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
.[
Scholz's research deals with the emergence of the manifold concept developed by Riemann, Poincaré and others, as well as the historical relations of mathematics to its applications in the 19th century. Scholz has investigated ]Karl Culmann
Carl Culmann (10 July 1821 – 9 December 1881) was a German structural engineer.
Born in Bad Bergzabern, Rhenish Palatinate, in modern-day Germany, Culmann's father, a pastor, tutored him at home before enrolling him at the military engineerin ...
's graphic statics, the determination of the crystallographic space group by Evgraf Fedorov
Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov (russian: Евгра́ф Степа́нович Фёдоров, – 21 May 1919) was a Russian mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist.
Fedorov was born in the Russian city of Orenburg. His father was a top ...
, the applied mathematics of Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mat ...
, and the relation of Gauss
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; german: Gauß ; la, Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes refer ...
's ideas on non-Euclidean geometry to his geodetic work. Continuing these investigations into the beginnings of group theory and concept of a mathematical manifold, Scholz has dealt intensively with Hermann Weyl's work in connection with general relativity theory
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. G ...
, cosmology, gauge theory, and quantum mechanics and, especially, Weyl metrics In general relativity, the Weyl metrics (named after the German-American mathematician Hermann Weyl) are a class of ''static'' and ''axisymmetric'' solutions to Einstein's field equation. Three members in the renowned Kerr–Newman family solution ...
in cosmology. Scholz wrote an article on Oswald Teichmüller
Paul Julius Oswald Teichmüller (; 18 June 1913 – 11 September 1943) was a German mathematician who made contributions to complex analysis. He introduced quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into the study of Riemann surf ...
for the ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography
The ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'' is a scholarly reference work that was published from 1970 through 1980 by publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, with main editor the science historian Charles Gillispie, from Princeton University. It consi ...
'' and an article, with Norbert Schappacher, in the ''Jahresberich'' (annual report) of the ''Deutsche Mathematiker Vereinigung'' (DMV). Scholz also pursued connections between the history of mathematics and philosophy, such as the historical and philosophical relations of Riemann's work to that of Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline.
Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest ...
, of 19th-century crystallography to the work of Schelling Schelling is a surname. Notable persons with that name include:
* Caroline Schelling (1763–1809), German intellectual
* Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher
* Felix Emanuel Schelling (1858–1945), American educato ...
, and of Hermann Weyl's philosophy of mathematics to the work of Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
.
Scholz was an invited speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1994 in Zürich. He is a co-editor, with Friedrich Hirzebruch
Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as ...
, Reinhold Remmert
Reinhold Remmert (22 June 1930 – 9 March 2016) was a German mathematician. Born in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, he studied mathematics, mathematical logic and physics in Münster. He established and developed the theory of complex-analytic spac ...
, Walter Purkert, and Egbert Brieskorn
Egbert Valentin Brieskorn (7 July 1936, in Rostock – 11 July 2013, in Bonn) was a German mathematician who introduced Brieskorn spheres and the Brieskorn–Grothendieck resolution.
Education
Brieskorn was born in 1936 as the son of a mill cons ...
, of the collected works of Felix Hausdorff.Hausdorff Edition
/ref> Scholz was awarded the London Mathematical Society's Hirst Prize and Lectureship in 2023.
Selected publications
*
*
*
*as editor: Geschichte der Algebra, Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1990
*as editor
Hermann Weyl´s Raum-Zeit-Materie and a general introduction to his scientific work
Birkhäuser 2001
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scholz, Erhard
1947 births
Living people
20th-century German historians
German historians of mathematics
University of Bonn alumni
University of Wuppertal alumni
Academic staff of the University of Wuppertal
21st-century German historians