Paul Gordan
Paul Gordan | |
---|---|
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg | |
Academic advisors | Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi |
Doctoral students | Emmy Noether |
Paul Albert Gordan (27 April 1837 – 21 December 1912) was a
He was born in
, Germany.He was known as "the king of
A famous quote attributed to Gordan about David Hilbert's proof of Hilbert's basis theorem, a result which vastly generalized his result on invariants, is "This is not mathematics; this is theology."[3][5] The proof in question was the (non-constructive) existence of a finite basis for invariants. It is not clear if Gordan really said this since the earliest reference to it is 25 years after the events and after his death. Nor is it clear whether the quote was intended as criticism, or praise, or a subtle joke. Gordan himself encouraged Hilbert and used Hilbert's results and methods, and the widespread story that he opposed Hilbert's work on invariant theory is a myth (though he did correctly point out in a referee's report that some of the reasoning in Hilbert's paper was incomplete).[6]
Publications
- Gordan, Paul (1885). Vorlesungen über Invariantentheorie. Vol. 1. Teubner. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- Gordan, Paul (1887). Dr. Paul Gordan's Vorlesungen über Invariantentheorie. Vol. 2. B. G. Teubner. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
- Gordan, Paul (1987) [1885], Kerschensteiner, Georg (ed.), Vorlesungen über Invariantentheorie (2nd ed.), New York: Chelsea Publishing Co. or American Mathematical Society, MR 0917266
Notes
- ISBN 9783642224645.
- ^ a b O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Paul Gordan", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews.
- ^ OCLC 49493513.
- ^ ).
- ^ Hermann Weyl, David Hilbert. 1862–1943, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1944).
- ^ Mclarty, Colin (2008), Theology and its discontents (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 16 January 2009
See also
References
- Die Redaktion der Mathematische Annalen (1913), "Paul Gordan", S2CID 177804295, available at DigiZeitschirften.
- S2CID 179178051, available at DigiZeitschirften.