Rudolf Karl Lüneburg (30 March 1903, Volkersheim (
Bockenem
Bockenem (; Eastphalian: ''Bokeln'') is a town in the district of Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, Germany that was founded in 1154. It is located on the German Timber-Frame Road.
Surrounding villages
*Jerze
*Königsdahlum
*Bornum
*Mahlum
*Schlewecke ...
) - 19 August 1949,
Great Falls, Montana), after his emigration at first Lueneburg, later Luneburg, falsified ''Luneberg'') was a professor of
mathematics and
optics
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...
at the
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...
Eye Institute. He was born in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, received his doctorate 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 emigrated to the United States in 1935.
His work included an analysis of the geometry of visual space as expected from
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
and the assumption that the angle of
vergence
A vergence is the simultaneous movement of both eyes in opposite directions to obtain or maintain single binocular vision.
When a creature with binocular vision looks at an object, the eyes must rotate around a vertical axis so that the proje ...
provides a constant measure of distance. From these premises he concluded that near field
visual space
Visual space is the experience of space by an aware observer. It is the subjective counterpart of the space of physical objects. There is a long history in philosophy, and later psychology of writings describing visual space, and its relationship ...
is
hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is an adjective describing something that resembles or pertains to a hyperbola (a curve), to hyperbole (an overstatement or exaggeration), or to hyperbolic geometry.
The following phenomena are described as ''hyperbolic'' because they ...
.
Bibliography
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published in:
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:* Reprint:
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See also
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Luneburg lens
A Luneburg lens (original German ''Lüneburg lens'', sometimes incorrectly spelled ''Luneberg lens'') is a spherically symmetric gradient-index lens. A typical Luneburg lens's refractive index ''n'' decreases radially from the center to the outer ...
*
Luneburg method
1903 births
1949 deaths
German emigrants to the United States
Geometers
Optical physicists
Dartmouth College faculty
20th-century German mathematicians
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