Ludwig Immanuel Magnus (March 15, 1790 – September 25, 1861) was a German Jewish

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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who, in 1831, published a paper about the

inversion transformation In mathematical physics, inversion transformations are a natural extension of Poincaré transformations to include all conformal map, conformal, bijection, one-to-one transformations on coordinate space-time. They are less studied in physics beca ...

, which leads to

inversive geometry In geometry, inversive geometry is the study of ''inversion'', a transformation of the Euclidean plane that maps circles or lines to other circles or lines and that preserves the angles between crossing curves. Many difficult problems in geometry ...

. His reputation as a mathematician was established by 1834 and an honorary

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

was conferred on him by 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 ...

. His work appeared in Gergonne's '' Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées'' vols. xi and xvi (1820–25); in ''

Crelle's Journal ''Crelle's Journal'', or just ''Crelle'', is the common name for a mathematics journal, the ''Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik'' (in English: ''Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematics''). History The journal was founded by A ...

'', vols. v, vii, viii, and ix (1830–32); in the third part (1833) of Meier Hirsch's "Sammlung Geometrischer Aufgaben"; and in "Sammlung von Aufgaben und Lehrsätzen aus der Analytischen Geometrie des Raumes" (published in 1837, written earlier). He studied

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

while working in his uncle's bank. From 1813 to 1815 he served as a gunner in the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

. After the war he returned to banking and taught mathematics until 1834, when the founder of the

academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

at which he was teaching died. He then left teaching and spent nine years as the head

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

officer for the Berliner Kassenverein, retiring in 1843.

References

* '' Allg. Deutsche Biographie,'' xx.91–92, Leipzig, 1884; * H.S.M. Coxeter (1961) ''Introduction to Geometry'', Chapter 6: Circles and Spheres (pp. 77–95),

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Publishing, publishing company that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company was founded in 1807 and pr ...

. * Poggendorff, ''Biog.-Literarisch Handwörterb.'' Leipzig, 1863, s.v. *

External links

Jewish Encyclopedia biography Works by Ludwig Immanuel Magnus at Google Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Magnus, Ludwig Immanuel 1790 births 1861 deaths 19th-century German mathematicians 19th-century German Jews German geometers