Karl Ludwig Scheeffer (born 1 June 1859 in

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named ...

;Vita

n Latin N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...

in his Ph.D. thesis, died 11 June 1885 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

) was a German

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 university teacher.''Ludwig Scheeffer'' (obituary by

Georg Cantor Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor ( , ; – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He played a pivotal role in the creation of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of ...

), in: ''Bibliotheca mathematica'
WS
1885
197–199
/ref>

Life

Scheeffer's parents were the

protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

s Ludwig and Mathilda, née Broscheit. He first attended a Gymnasium in Königsberg and after his father's death transferred to the . In 1875, he was accepted at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, where he studied for four years, except two semesters at

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

and

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 wel ...

. On 1 March 1880, he finally received his doctorate from the University of Berlin with the dissertation ''"Ueber Bewegungen starrer Punktsysteme in einer ebenen n-fachen Mannigfaltigkeit (On motions of rigid point systems in a plane n-fold manifold)"''. Since initially he did not strive for a university career, he passed the necessary examination for the teaching profession in the subjects of mathematics, physics, philosophical propaedeutics and descriptive natural sciences. After this, he began his pedagogical probationary year at the

Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium The Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium (or Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium) was a secondary school ( ''Gymnasium'') in Berlin. History The school originated from a Realschule founded by the Pietist Johann Julius Hecker in 1747, the first secondary school ...

in Berlin at Easter 1881. During his pedagogical probationary year, Scheeffer realized that he would like to devote his creative energy to science after all. After a trip to the Alps, which was necessary for health reasons, he moved to the

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

. There he

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 ...

in 1883 or 1884 with the paper ''"Ueber einige bestimmte Integrale, betrachtet als Funktionen eines komplexen Parameters (On Some Definite Integrals Considered as Functions of a Complex Parameter)"'' and subsequently became a

Privatdozent ''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...

. While residing in the Briennerstraße, He

lecture A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...

d about "Elements of differential and integral calculus", in the winter term 1884/1885, and on "Selected topic in integral calculus" and "Synthetic geometry" in the summer term 1885,Vorlesungsverzeichnis Sommer-Semester 1885
p.15 At the age of 26, he died of

typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...

. Despite the brevity of his life and academic activity, he published a number of important writings and essays.

Selected publications

* * ''Ueber einige bestimmte Integrale, betrachtet als Funktionen eines komplexen Parameters''. Dreijer, Berlin 1883. * * * (Part I) &mdash
Part II
(p. 279–296) * *

References

External links

Record
on Scheeffer's Ph.D. thesis at

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization a ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scheeffer, Ludwig 19th-century German mathematicians Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Humboldt University of Berlin alumni 1859 births 1885 deaths

Life

Selected publications

See also

References

External links