Karl Theodor Reye (born 20 June 1838 in Ritzebüttel,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and died 2 July 1919 in

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is, after Nuremberg and Fürth, the Franconia#Towns and cities, third-largest city in Franconia located in the north of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. It sp ...

) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

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 ...

. He contributed to geometry, particularly

projective geometry In mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting (''p ...

and

synthetic geometry Synthetic geometry (sometimes referred to as axiomatic geometry or even pure geometry) is geometry without the use of coordinates. It relies on the axiomatic method for proving all results from a few basic properties initially called postulates ...

. He is best known for his introduction of configurations in the second edition of his book, ''Geometrie der Lage'' (Geometry of Position, 1876). The Reye configuration of 12 points, 12 planes, and 16 lines is named after him. Reye also developed a novel solution to the following three-dimensional extension of the problem of Apollonius: Construct all possible spheres that are simultaneously tangent to four given spheres.

Life

Reye obtained his Ph.D. from 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 ...

in 1861. His dissertation was entitled "Die mechanische Wärme-Theorie und das Spannungsgesetz der Gase" (The mechanical theory of heat and the potential law of gases).

Mathematical work

Reye worked on

conic section A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, tho ...

quadric In mathematics, a quadric or quadric surface is a generalization of conic sections (ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas). In three-dimensional space, quadrics include ellipsoids, paraboloids, and hyperboloids. More generally, a quadric hype ...

s and

. Reye's work on linear manifolds of projective plane pencils and of bundles on spheres influenced later work by Corrado Segre on manifolds. He introduced Reye congruences, the earliest examples of

Enriques surface In mathematics, Enriques surfaces are algebraic surfaces such that the irregularity ''q'' = 0 and the canonical line bundle ''K'' is non-trivial but has trivial square. Enriques surfaces are all projective (and therefore Kähler over the complex ...

References

External links

* * * Theodor Reye (1892
Die Geometrie der Lage
from

archive.org The Internet Archive is an American non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, software applic ...

. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Reye, Theodor 1838 births 1919 deaths German geometers 19th-century German mathematicians University of Göttingen alumni Academic staff of ETH Zurich Academic staff of RWTH Aachen University Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Heads of universities in Germany 20th-century German mathematicians

Life

Mathematical work

References

Further reading

External links