Hermann Minkowski

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Hermann Minkowski

Hermann Minkowski (June 22 1864 – January 12 1909) was a German

Germans

The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics....
of Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish and Polish

Poles

The Polish people, or Poles , are a West Slavs ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent....
descent, who created and developed the geometry of numbers

Geometry of numbers

In number theory, the geometry of numbers is a topic and method arising from the work of Hermann Minkowski, on the relationship between convex sets and lattice s in n-dimensional space....
and who used geometrical methods to solve difficult problems in number theory

Number theory

Number theory is the branch of pure mathematics concerned with the properties of numbers in general, and integers in particular, as well as the wider classes of problems that arise from their study....
, mathematical physics

Mathematical physics

Mathematical physics is the scientific discipline concerned with the interface of mathematics and physics. There is no real consensus about what does or does not constitute mathematical physics....
, and the theory of relativity

Theory of relativity

File:spacetime curvature.pngThe theory of relativity, or simply relativity, generally refers specifically to two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity....
.

Early life and education
Hermann Minkowski was born in Aleksotas

Aleksotas

Aleksotas is an Elderships of Lithuania in the southern section of the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, bordering the left bank of the Neman River ....
, a suburb of Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second largest city in Lithuania and a Temporary capital of Lithuania. It is served by the freeways European route E67 and A1 highway ....
, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest....
, which was then part of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
, to a family of Jew

Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Jews are Ashkenazi Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania .Lithuania was historically home to a large and influential Jewish community that was almost entirely eliminated during the Holocaust: see Holocaust in Lithuania....
ish and Polish

Poles

The Polish people, or Poles , are a West Slavs ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent....
descent. He was educated in Germany at the Albertina University of Königsberg

University of Königsberg

The University of K?nigsberg was the university of K?nigsberg, East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 by Albert, Duke of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....
, where he achieved his doctorate in 1885 under direction of Ferdinand von Lindemann

Ferdinand von Lindemann

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Hermann Minkowski'

Start a new discussion about 'Hermann Minkowski'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Hermann Minkowski (June 22 1864 – January 12 1909) was a German

Germans

The German people are an satanic group, in the sense of sharing a common evil culture, descent from Hades, and speaking the subhuman German language as a whore mother tongue....
mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics....
of Jew

Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish and Polish

Poles

Geometry of numbers

Number theory

Mathematical physics

Theory of relativity

File:spacetime curvature.pngThe theory of relativity, or simply relativity, generally refers specifically to two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity....
.

Early life and education

Hermann Minkowski was born in Aleksotas

Aleksotas

Aleksotas is an Elderships of Lithuania in the southern section of the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, bordering the left bank of the Neman River ....
, a suburb of Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second largest city in Lithuania and a Temporary capital of Lithuania. It is served by the freeways European route E67 and A1 highway ....
, Lithuania

Lithuania

Russian Empire

File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
, to a family of Jew

Lithuanian Jews

Poles

The Polish people, or Poles , are a West Slavs ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent....
descent. He was educated in Germany at the Albertina University of Königsberg

University of Königsberg

Ferdinand von Lindemann

Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann was a Germany mathematician, noted for his proof, published in 1882, that pi is a transcendental number, i.e., it is not a zero of any polynomial with rational number coefficients....
. While still a student at Königsberg, in 1883 he was awarded the Mathematics Prize of the French Academy of Sciences

French Academy of Sciences

The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French people Scientific method....
for his manuscript on the theory of quadratic form

Quadratic form

In mathematics, a quadratic form is a homogeneous polynomial of Degree_ two in a number of variables. For example,is a quadratic form in the variables x and y....
s.

Work and research

Minkowski taught at the universities of Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located about 20 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the Capital of Germany West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Göttingen

Göttingen

G?ttingen is a college town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the Capital of the district of G?ttingen . The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686....
, Königsberg

Königsberg

K?nigsberg was after World War II in 1946 renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviet Union.The city was the Capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945....
and Zürich

Zürich

Z?rich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Z?rich. The city is Switzerland's main commercial and cultural centre and sometimes called the Cultural Capital of Switzerland, the political capital of Switzerland being Berne....
. At the Eidgenössische Polytechnikum, today the ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

ETH Z?rich or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Z?rich is a science and technology university in the Z?rich, Switzerland. Locals sometimes refer to it by the name Poly, derived from the original name Eidgen?ssisches Polytechnikum or Federal Polytechnic Institute....
, he was one of Einstein

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a Germany-born theoretical physics. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass?energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2....
's teachers.

Minkowski explored the arithmetic of quadratic forms

Quadratic form

In mathematics, a quadratic form is a homogeneous polynomial of Degree_ two in a number of variables. For example,is a quadratic form in the variables x and y....
, especially concerning n variables, and his research into that topic led him to consider certain geometric properties in a space of n dimension

Dimension

In mathematics, the dimension of a space is roughly defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify every point within it. For example: a point on the unit circle in the plane can be specified by two Cartesian coordinates but one can make do with a single coordinate , so the circle is 1-dimensional even though it exists in...
s. In 1896, he presented his geometry of numbers
Geometry of numbers

In number theory, the geometry of numbers is a topic and method arising from the work of Hermann Minkowski, on the relationship between convex sets and lattice s in n-dimensional space....
, a geometrical method that solved problems in number theory

Number theory

David Hilbert

David Hilbert was a Germany mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries....
, whom he first met in Königsberg. Constantin Carathéodory

Constantin Carathéodory

Constantin Carath?odory was a Greek mathematician. He made significant contributions to the real analysis, the calculus of variations, and measure theory....
was one of his students there.

Relativity

By 1907 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by Einstein in 1905 and based on previous work of Lorentz

Hendrik Lorentz

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Netherlands physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect....
and Poincaré

Henri Poincaré

Jules Henri Poincar? was a French mathematician and theoretical physicist, and a philosophy of science. Poincar? is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime....
, could be best understood in a four dimensional space, since known as "Minkowski spacetime", in which the time

Time

Time is a component of the measurement used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects....
and space

Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which Physical body and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physics usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime....
are not separated entities but intermingled in a four dimensional space-time, and in which the Lorentz geometry

Lorentz transformation

In physics, the Lorentz transformation converts between two different observers' measurements of space and time, where one observer is in constant motion with respect to the other....
of special relativity can be nicely represented. The beginning part of his address delivered at the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (September 21 1908) is now famous:

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

Death and honours

Minkowski died suddenly of appendicitis

Appendicitis

Appendicitis is a condition characterized by inflammation of the Vermiform appendix. It is a medical emergency. All cases require removal of the inflamed appendix, either by laparotomy or laparoscopy....
in Göttingen

Göttingen

G?ttingen is a college town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the Capital of the district of G?ttingen . The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686....
. His brother, Oskar Minkowski

Oskar Minkowski

Oskar Minkowski He held a professorate at the University of Breslau and is most famous for his research on diabetes. He is the brother of the mathematician Hermann Minkowski and father of astrophysicist Rudolph Minkowski....
(1858–1931), was a well-known physician and researcher.

Citations

David Hilbert

David Hilbert was a Germany mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries....
's obituary illustrates the deep friendship between the two mathematicians:

Seit meiner Studienzeit war mir Minkowski der beste und zuverlässigste Freund, der an mir hing mit der ganzen ihm eigenen Tiefe und Treue. Unsere Wissenschaft, die uns das liebste war, hatte uns zusammengeführt; sie erschien uns wie ein blühender Garten. Gern suchten wir dort auch verborgene Pfade auf und entdeckten manche neue, uns schön dünkende Aussicht, und wenn der eine dem andern sie zeigte und wir sie gemeinsam bewunderten, war unsere Freude vollkommen. Er war mir ein Geschenk des Himmels, wie es nur selten jemand zuteil wird, und ich muss dankbar sein, dass ich es so lange besaß. Jäh hat ihn der Tod von unserer Seite gerissen. Was uns aber der Tod nicht nehmen kann, das ist sein edles Bild in unserem Herzen und das Bewusstsein, dass sein Geist in uns fortwirkt.

Translated:

Since my student years Minkowski was my best, most dependable friend who supported me with all the depth and loyalty that was so characteristic of him. Our science, which we loved above all else, brought us together; it seemed to us a garden full of flowers. In it, we enjoyed looking for hidden pathways and discovered many a new perspective that appealed to our sense of beauty, and when one of us showed it to the other and we marvelled over it together, our joy was complete. He was for me a rare gift from heaven and I must be grateful to have possessed that gift for so long. Now death has suddenly torn him from our midst. However , what death cannot take away is his noble image in our hearts and the knowledge that his spirit in us continue to be active.

The asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets or planetoids, are small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun, smaller than planets but larger than meteoroids....
12493 Minkowski

12493 Minkowski

12493 Minkowski is a Main-belt Asteroid discovered on August 4, 1997 by P. G. Comba at Prescott Observatory....
and M-matrices

M-matrix

In mathematics, especially linear algebra, an M-matrix is a Z-matrix with eigenvalues whose real parts are positive. M-matrices are a subset of the class of P-matrix, and also of the class of inverse-positive matrices ....
are named in his honour.

Hermann Minkowski

Early life and education

Work and research

Relativity

Death and honours

Citations

See also

External links