Georg Ferdinand Helm (; 15 March 1851 in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a ...

– 13 September 1923 in Dresden) was a German

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. Helm graduated from high school from the Annenschule in Dresden in 1867. Thereafter he studied mathematics and natural sciences at the Dresden Polytechnical School, and then at the universities of

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

from 1871 to 1873. Helm first taught at the Annenschule, his high school alma mater.Programm der Annen-Realschule zu Dresden 1882, page 50
/ref> Then he taught

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

at the

Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

and at the Royal Saxon Polytechnic from 1888 until 1922. He was an interdisciplinarian, whose teaching responsibilities included a seminar on insurance statistics. Helm coined the term “ mathematical chemistry”. His work in the area of

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

postulated that money was the economic equivalent of the lowest form of

social entropy Social entropy is a sociological theory that evaluates social behaviours using a method based on the second law of thermodynamics. The equivalent of entropy in a social system is considered to be wealth or residence location. The theory was introd ...

as described in his work “Teachings on Energy” (''in German'', ''Lehre von der Energie'', 18

.

Selected works

* ''Lehre von der Energie'' (Leipzig, 1887

* ''Grundzüge der mathematischen Chemie'' (1894

** ''The principles of mathematical chemistry: The energetics of chemical phenomena'' (New York, 1897

* ''Die Energetik'' (Leipzig, 1898) * ''Die Theorien der Elektrodynamik nach ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung'' (Leipzig, 1904

* ''Die Grundlehren der höheren Mathematik'' (Leipzig, 1910)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Helm, Georg 19th-century German mathematicians 20th-century German mathematicians Scientists from Dresden 1851 births 1923 deaths