1981 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
An Outline of the Life and Work of E.B. Christoffel (1829–1900)
Author : Paul L. Butzer
Published in: E. B. Christoffel
Publisher: Birkhäuser Basel
Included in: Professional Book Archive
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This article begins with an account of the life of Christoffel and of the intellectual milieu in which he worked, namely the Institutes of Technology in Zürich and Berlin, and the University of Strasbourg. A survey of Christoffel’s work follows. His major contributions lie in diverse areas: (i) geometry, including the foundations of tensor analysis; (ii) function theory, including conformal mappings, abelian integrals and theta functions; (iii) numerical analysis; (iv) orthogonal polynomials and continued fractions; (v) ordinary and partial differential equations, potential theory; (vi) theory of shock waves; and (vii) dispersion of light. Finally, an attempt is made to assess Christoffel’s work and its subsequent influence upon the development of modern mathematics, physics and mechanics.