Ernst Kötter (1859-1922) was a German mathematician.

Education

Kötter graduated in 1884 from the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

under the supervision of

Karl Weierstrass Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (; ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the " father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematics and trained as a school t ...

and

Leopold Kronecker Leopold Kronecker (; 7 December 1823 – 29 December 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, abstract algebra and logic, and criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory. Heinrich Weber quoted Kronecker as having said, ...

Career

Kötter's treatise ''"Fundamentals of a purely geometrical theory of

algebraic plane curve In mathematics, an affine algebraic plane curve is the zero set of a polynomial in two variables. A projective algebraic plane curve is the zero set in a projective plane of a homogeneous polynomial in three variables. An affine algebraic plane cu ...

s"'' gained the 1886 prize of the Berlin Royal Academy. In 1901, he published his report on ''"The development of

synthetic geometry Synthetic geometry (sometimes referred to as axiomatic geometry or even pure geometry) is geometry without the use of coordinates. It relies on the axiomatic method for proving all results from a few basic properties initially called postulates ...

from

Monge Gaspard Monge, Comte de Pelusium, Péluse (; 9 May 1746 – 28 July 1818) was a French mathematician, commonly presented as the inventor of descriptive geometry, (the mathematical basis of) technical drawing, and the father of differential geom ...

to Staudt (1847)"''; it had been sent to the press as early as 1897, but completion was deferred by Kötter's appointment to Aachen University and a subsequent persisting illness. He constructed a mobile wood model to illustrate the theorems of

Dandelin spheres In geometry, the Dandelin spheres are one or two spheres that are tangent both to a plane and to a cone that intersects the plane. The intersection of the cone and the plane is a conic section, and the point at which either sphere touches the pl ...

. In a discussion with Schoenflies and Kötter,

Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosophy of mathematics, philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad ...

reportedly uttered his famous quotation according to which points, lines, and planes in geometry could be named as well ''"tables, chairs, and beer mugs"''. Here: p.402-403

Publications

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References

19th-century German mathematicians German geometers 1859 births 1922 deaths 20th-century German mathematicians {{Germany-mathematician-stub