Erhard Scholz (born 1947) is a German historian of mathematics with interests in the history of mathematics in the 19th and 20th centuries, historical perspective on the philosophy of mathematics and science, and

Hermann Weyl Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl (; ; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist, logician and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, ...

's geometrical methods applied to gravitational theory.

Education and career

Scholz studied mathematics at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

and the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

from 1968 to 1975 with ''

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from ) is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia ...

'' from the University of Bonn in 1975. In 1979, he completed his doctorate (

Promotion Promotion may refer to: Marketing * Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...

) at the University of Bonn with thesis ''Entwicklung des Mannigfaltigkeitsbegriffs von Riemann bis Poincaré'' (Development of the concept of

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a N ...

from

Riemann Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (; ; 17September 182620July 1866) was a German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first ...

Poincaré Poincaré is a French surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Henri Poincaré Jules Henri Poincaré (, ; ; 29 April 185417 July 1912) was a French mathematician, Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philos ...

) under the supervision of

Egbert Brieskorn Egbert Valentin Brieskorn (7 July 1936 in Rostock – 11 July 2013 in Bonn) was a German mathematician who introduced Brieskorn spheres and the Brieskorn–Grothendieck resolution. Education Brieskorn was born in 1936 as the son of a mill const ...

and

Henk J. M. Bos Hendrik Jan Maarten "Henk" Bos (17 July 1940 – 12 February 2024) was a Dutch historian of mathematics. Life and career Hendrik Jan Maarten Bos was born in Enschede on 17 July 1940. Bos was a student of Hans Freudenthal and Jerome Ravetz at Ut ...

. In 1986, Scholtz

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

at the

University of Wuppertal The University of Wuppertal (''Universität Wuppertal'') is a German scientific institution located in Wuppertal in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The university's official name in German is ''Bergische Universität Wuppertal'' ...

. There he became in 1989 an associate professor of the history of mathematics and retired in 2012. He also works at the University of Wuppertal's ''Interdisziplinären Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung'' (IZWT, Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Research), which he co-founded in 2004. In 1993, he was a visiting professor at the ''Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte'' (Institute for the History of Science) at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

. Scholz's research deals with the emergence of the

concept developed by Riemann, Poincaré and others, as well as the historical relations of mathematics to its applications in the 19th century. Scholz has investigated Karl Culmann's

graphic statics In a broad sense, the term graphic statics is used to describe the technique of solving particular practical problems of statics using graphical means. Actively used in the architecture of the 19th century, the methods of graphic statics were large ...

, the determination of the crystallographic space group by

Evgraf Fedorov Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov (, – 21 May 1919) was a Russian mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist. Fedorov was born in the Russian city of Orenburg. His father was a topographical engineer. The family later moved to Saint Petersb ...

, the applied mathematics of

Hermann Grassmann Hermann Günther Grassmann (, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was littl ...

, and the relation of

Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; ; ; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, Geodesy, geodesist, and physicist, who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. He was director of the Göttingen Observat ...

's ideas on non-Euclidean geometry to his geodetic work. Continuing these investigations into the beginnings of group theory and concept of a mathematical manifold, Scholz has dealt intensively with

's work in connection with

general relativity theory General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

, cosmology, gauge theory, and quantum mechanics and, especially,

Weyl metrics In general relativity, the Weyl metrics (named after the German-American mathematician Hermann Weyl) are a class of ''static'' and ''axisymmetric'' solutions to Einstein's field equation. Three members in the renowned Kerr–Newman family solution ...

in cosmology. Scholz wrote an article on

Oswald Teichmüller Paul Julius Oswald Teichmüller (; 18 June 1913 – 11 September 1943) was a German mathematician. He made contributions to complex analysis, including the introduction of quasiconformal mappings and differential geometric methods into the study ...

for the ''

Dictionary of Scientific Biography The ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'' is a scholarly reference work that was published from 1970 through 1980 by publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, with main editor the science historian Charles Coulston Gillispie, Charles Gillispie, from Pri ...

'' and an article, with Norbert Schappacher, in the ''Jahresberich'' (annual report) of the ''Deutsche Mathematiker Vereinigung'' (DMV). Scholz also pursued connections between the history of mathematics and philosophy, such as the historical and philosophical relations of Riemann's work to that of

Johann Friedrich Herbart Johann Friedrich Herbart (; 4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest ...

, of 19th-century

crystallography Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word ''crystallography'' is derived from the Ancient Greek word (; "clear ice, rock-crystal"), and (; "to write"). In J ...

to the work of Schelling, and of Hermann Weyl's philosophy of mathematics to the work of

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many ...

. Scholz was an invited speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in 1994 in Zürich. He is a co-editor, with

Friedrich Hirzebruch Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as ...

Reinhold Remmert Reinhold Remmert (22 June 1930 – 9 March 2016) was a German mathematician. Born in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, he studied mathematics, mathematical logic and physics in Münster. He established and developed the theory of complex-analytic space ...

Walter Purkert Walter Purkert (born 22 January 1944 in Trautenau) is a German mathematician and historian of mathematics. Lothar Mertens: ''Lexikon der DDR-Historiker. Biographien und Bibliographien zu den Geschichtswissenschaftlern aus der Deutschen Demokratisch ...

, and

, of the collected works of Felix Hausdorff.Hausdorff Edition
/ref> Scholz was awarded the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

Hirst Prize and Lectureship The Hirst Prize and Lectureship is a biennial prize, jointly awarded by the London Mathematical Society (LMS) and the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM). The prize recognises original and innovative contributions to the history of ...

in 2023.

Selected publications

* * * *as editor: Geschichte der Algebra, Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1990 *as editor
Hermann Weyl´s Raum-Zeit-Materie and a general introduction to his scientific work
Birkhäuser 2001

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scholz, Erhard 1947 births Living people 20th-century German historians German historians of mathematics University of Bonn alumni University of Wuppertal alumni Academic staff of the University of Wuppertal 21st-century German historians