Hermann Minkowski

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hermann Minkowski
Albertina University of Königsberg
Known for
SpouseAuguste Adler
Children2
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, physics, philosophy
InstitutionsUniversity of Göttingen and ETH Zurich
Doctoral advisorFerdinand von Lindemann
Doctoral studentsConstantin Carathéodory
Louis Kollros
Dénes Kőnig
Signature
Special relativity
The world line: a diagrammatic representation of spacetime
Foundations
Consequences
Spacetime
Dynamics
People

Hermann Minkowski (

Zürich and Göttingen. He created and developed the geometry of numbers and used geometrical methods to solve problems in number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity
.

Minkowski is perhaps best known for his foundational work describing space and time as a

special theory of relativity
(1905).

Personal life and family

Hermann Minkowski was born in the town of

Jewish descent.[6] Hermann was a younger brother of the medical researcher Oskar (born 1858).[7] In different sources Minkowski's nationality is variously given as German,[8][9][10] Polish,[11][12][13] or Lithuanian-German,[14] or Russian.[1]

To escape Jewish

persecution in the Russian Empire, the family moved to Königsberg in 1872,[15] where the father became involved in rag export and later in manufacture of mechanical clockwork tin toys (he operated his firm Lewin Minkowski & Son with his eldest son Max).[16]

Minkowski studied in Königsberg and taught in Bonn (1887–1894), Königsberg (1894–1896) and Zürich (1896–1902), and finally in Göttingen from 1902 until his death in 1909. He married Auguste Adler in 1897 with whom he had two daughters; the electrical engineer and inventor Reinhold Rudenberg was his son-in-law.

Minkowski died suddenly of appendicitis in Göttingen on 12 January 1909. David Hilbert's obituary of Minkowski illustrates the deep friendship between the two mathematicians (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 marveled 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 continues to be active in us.

Max Born delivered the obituary on behalf of the mathematics students at Göttingen.[17]

The main-belt

12493 Minkowski and M-matrices are named in Minkowski's honor.[18]

Education and career

Minkowski in 1883, at the time of being awarded the Mathematics Prize of the French Academy of Sciences

Minkowski was educated in East Prussia at the Albertina University of Königsberg, where he earned his doctorate in 1885 under the direction of Ferdinand von Lindemann. In 1883, while still a student at Königsberg, he was awarded the Mathematics Prize of the French Academy of Sciences for his manuscript on the theory of quadratic forms. Due to the very young age of 18, which was unheard of in the mathematics community, and his obscurity as a mathematician at the time, his sharing the award with eminent English mathematician Henry Smith (who was certainly a great deal more famous than Hermann and to whom the prize was awarded posthumously) caused severe unrest among English mathematicians. The prize committee, despite the numerous complaints, never changed their decision. He also became a friend of another renowned mathematician, David Hilbert. His brother, Oskar Minkowski (1858–1931), was a well-known physician and researcher.[15]

Minkowski taught at the universities of Bonn, Königsberg, Zürich, and Göttingen. At the

Eidgenössische Polytechnikum, today the ETH Zurich
, he was one of Einstein's teachers.

Minkowski explored the arithmetic of

Minkowski cover[20]
of a curve.

In 1902, he joined the Mathematics Department of Göttingen and became a close colleague of David Hilbert, whom he first met at university in Königsberg. Constantin Carathéodory was one of his students there.

Work on relativity

Further information:
Minkowski diagram

By 1908 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by his former student

space–time, and in which the Lorentz geometry
of special relativity can be effectively represented using the invariant interval (see History of special relativity).

The mathematical basis of Minkowski space can also be found in the

Lorentz transformations, which included contributions of Wilhelm Killing (1880, 1885), Henri Poincaré (1881), Homersham Cox (1881), Alexander Macfarlane (1894) and others (see History of Lorentz transformations
).

The beginning part of his address called "Space and Time" delivered at the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (21 September 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.

Publications

Relativity

Diophantine approximations

Mathematical (posthumous)

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^
    ISBN 9780761405511
    .
  2. ^ "Minkowski". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  3. ^ А. И. Хаеш (1873). "Коробочное делопроизводство как источник сведений о жизни еврейских обществ и их персональном составе" (in Russian). ...купец Левин Минковский подарил молитвенному обществу при Ковенском казённом еврейском училище начатую им... постройкой молитвенную школу вместе с плацем, с тем, чтобы общество это озаботилась окончанием таковой постройки. Общество, располагая средствами добровольных пожертвований, возвело уже это здание под крышу, но затем средства сии истощились...
  4. ^ "Kaunas: dates and facts. Electronic directory".
  5. ^ "Box-Tax Paperwork Records". Archived from the original on 8 January 2015. Kovno. In 1873 the merchant (kupez), Levin Minkovsky, gave (as a gift) to the prayer association of the Kovno state Jewish school a lot with an ongoing construction of a prayer school that (the construction) he had started so that the association would take care of completing the construction. The association, having some funds from voluntary contributions, had built the structure up to the roof, but then, ran out of money
  6. ^ "Minkowski biography".
  7. ^ Oskar Minkowski (1858–1931). Archived 29 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine. The Jewish genealogy site JewishGen.org (Lithuania database, registration required) contains the birth record in the Kovno rabbinical books of Hermann's younger brother Tuvia in 1868 to Boruch Yakovlevich Minkovsky and his wife Rakhil Isaakovna Taubman.
  8. ^ "Hermann Minkowski German mathematician". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  9. ISBN 978-1-61530-383-0
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7
    .
  11. ISBN 978-0-8014-1742-9
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-19-967598-2
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0-19-930108-9
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-85229-961-6
    .
  15. ^ a b "Historical note: Oskar Minkowski (1858–1931). An outstanding master of diabetes research". 2006.
  16. ^ Report of the Federal Security Agency (p. 183); Tyra lithographed tin toy dog; Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski: A Biographical Memoir.
  17. ISBN 9780738206936
    .
  18. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3
    .
  19. ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Minkowski Sausage". MathWorld. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  20. ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Minkowski Cover". MathWorld. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  21. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1909-01753-7
    .
  22. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1914-02597-2
    .
  23. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1915-02658-3
    .

External links

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