thumd, 250px Karl Heun (; born 3 April 1859,

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

; died 10 January 1929,

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the German States of Germany, state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital o ...

) was a

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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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who introduced Heun's equation, Heun functions, and Heun's method. Karl Heun studied mathematics and philosophy in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

(and briefly in

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). In 1881 with the dissertation ''Die Kugelfunktionen und Laméschen Funktionen als Determinanten'' he received his doctorate under Schering 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 i ...

. He then worked as a teacher at an agricultural college in Wehlau, until in 1883 he emigrated to England where he taught until 1885 in

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. He completed his studies in London and received his Habilitierung qualification in June 1886 in

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with the thesis ''Über lineare Differentialgleichungen zweiter Ordnung, deren Lösungen durch den Kettenbruchalgorithmus verknüpft sind''. From 1886 to 1889 he taught at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: link=no, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of ...

, but because of financial circumstances from 1890 to 1902 he had to work as a teacher in Berlin. In 1900 Karl Heun received the title of Professor and then in 1902 he obtained the professorial chair of theoretical mechanics at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, where he worked until he retired with a pension in 1922.

References

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Heun, Karl 19th-century German mathematicians 20th-century German mathematicians 1859 births 1929 deaths