Niels Fabian Helge von Koch (25 January 1870 – 11 March 1924) was a Swedish

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 gave his name to the famous

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape, geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scale ...

known as the Koch snowflake, one of the earliest fractal curves to be described. He was born to Swedish nobility. His grandfather, Nils Samuel von Koch (1801–1881), was the Chancellor of Justice. His father, Richert Vogt von Koch (1838–1913) was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the

Life Guards of Horse Life Guards of Horse (, K 1) was a Swedish Army cavalry regiment, first raised in 1770. It saw service for two centuries, before being amalgamated with the Life Regiment Dragoons (K 2) to form the Life Regiment of Horse (K 1) in 1928. History ...

of the

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. He was enrolled at the newly created Stockholm University College in 1887 (studying under Gösta Mittag-Leffler), and at

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

in 1888, where he also received his bachelor's degree (''filosofie kandidat'') since the non-governmental college in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

had not yet received the rights to issue degrees. He received his PhD in Uppsala in 1892. He was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1905, succeeding Ivar Bendixson, and became professor of pure mathematics at Stockholm University College in 1911. Von Koch wrote several papers on

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

. One of his results was a 1901 theorem proving that the Riemann hypothesis implies what is now known to be the strongest possible form of the

prime number theorem In mathematics, the prime number theorem (PNT) describes the asymptotic analysis, asymptotic distribution of the prime numbers among the positive integers. It formalizes the intuitive idea that primes become less common as they become larger by p ...

. He described the Koch curve in a 1904 paper entitled ("On a continuous curve without tangents constructible from elementary geometry"). He was an invited speaker at the

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in 1900 in

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with talk ("On the distribution of prime numbers") and in 1912 in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, England, with talk ''On regular and irregular solutions of some infinite systems of linear equations''.

Notes

References

* * contains an English translation of the paper 'On a continuous curve...'

External links

* * * * von Koch family {{DEFAULTSORT:Koch, Helge von 1870 births 1924 deaths 19th-century Swedish mathematicians Stockholm University alumni Uppsala University alumni Academic staff of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology Academic staff of Stockholm University Swedish nobility 20th-century Swedish mathematicians Number theorists Scientists from Stockholm Algebraists