Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was a
Russian
mathematician.
Quotations
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.
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Encyclopedia
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was a
Russian
mathematician.
Biography
Lobachevsky was born in
Nizhny Novgorod,
Russia. His parents were Ivan Maksimovich Lobachevsky, a clerk in a
landsurveying office, and Praskovia Alexandrovna Lobachevskaya. In 1800, his father died and his mother moved to
Kazan. In Kazan, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky attended Kazan Gymnasium, graduating in 1807 and then
Kazan University which was founded just three years earlier, in 1804.
At Kazan University, Lobachevsky was influenced by professor Johann Christian Martin Bartels , a former teacher and friend of
Carl Friedrich Gauss. Lobachevsky received a Master's degree in
physics and mathematics in 1811. In 1814, he became a lecturer at Kazan University, and in 1822 he became a full
professor. He served in many administrative positions and was the rector of Kazan University from 1827 to 1846. He retired in 1846, after which his health rapidly deteriorated.
In 1832, he married Varvara Alexivna Moisieva. They had seven children.
Mathematical results
Lobachevsky's main achievement is the development of
non-Euclidean geometry. Before him, mathematicians were trying to deduce
Euclid's
fifth postulate from other axioms. Lobachevsky would instead develop a
geometry in which the fifth postulate was not true. This idea was first reported on February 23 , 1826 to the session of the department of physics and mathematics, and this research was printed in the UMA
in 1829–1830. The recognition of his ideas by the mathematical community was quite slow. They were fully accepted only several decades after Lobachevsky's death.
Another of Lobachevsky's achievements was developing a method for the approximation of the
roots of algebraic equations. This method is now known as Dandelin-Gräffe method, named after two other mathematicians who discovered it independently. In Russia, it is called the Lobachevsky method. Lobachevsky gave the definition of a function as a correspondence between two sets of real numbers .
In popular culture
In the
1950s,
humorist,
satirist, and mathematician
Tom Lehrer wrote a song, inspired by a
Danny Kaye routine about
Stanislavsky, in which he credited Lobachevsky with teaching him the secret of success as a mathematician: plagiarism Lehrer has noted that he chose Lobachevsky mainly because his name was reminiscent of Stanislavsky's, and not because Lobachevsky is particularly known for this misdemeanor.
In
Poul Anderson's novella "Operation Changeling" , a group of sorcerers navigate a non-Euclidean universe with the assistance of the ghosts of Lobachevsky and Bolyai.
See also
External links
