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Karl Weierstrass
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Karl Weierstrass

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (Weierstra)


Born
31 October 1815
Ostenfelde, Province of Westphalia, Kingdom of Prussia
Died
19 February 1897 (aged81)
Berlin, Province of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia
Residence
Germany
Nationality
German
Fields
Mathematics
Institutions
Gewerbeinstitut

Alma mater
University of Bonn
Mnster Academy
Academic advisors
Christoph Gudermann
Doctoral students
Nikolai Bugaev
Georg Cantor
Georg Frobenius
Lazarus Fuchs
Wilhelm Killing
Leo Knigsberger
Sofia Kovalevskaya
Mathias Lerch
Hans von Mangoldt
Eugen Netto
Adolf Piltz
Carl Runge
Arthur Schoenflies
Friedrich Schottky
Hermann Schwarz
Ludwig Stickelberger
Ernst Ktter
Knownfor
Weierstrass function
(, )-definition of limit
WeierstrassErdmann condition
Weierstrass theorem
Notable awards
PhD (Hon):
University of Knigsberg (1854)
Copley Medal (1895)

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (German: Weierstra; 31 October 1815


19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father
of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied
mathematics and trained as a teacher, eventually teaching mathematics,
physics, botany and gymnastics.
Weierstrass formalized the definition of the continuity of a function, proved the
intermediate value theorem and the BolzanoWeierstrass theorem, and used
the latter to study the properties of continuous functions on closed bounded
intervals.
Contents [hide]
1
Biography
2
Mathematical contributions
2.1

Soundness of calculus
2.2
Calculus of variations
2.3
Other analytical theorems
3
Students
4
Honours and awards
5
Selected works
6
See also
7
References
8
External links

Biography[edit]

Weierstrass was born in Ostenfelde, part of Ennigerloh, Province of


Westphalia.[1]
Weierstrass was the son of Wilhelm Weierstrass, a government official, and
Theodora Vonderforst. His interest in mathematics began while he was a
gymnasium student at the Theodorianum(de) in Paderborn. He was sent to
the University of Bonn upon graduation to prepare for a government position.
Because his studies were to be in the fields of law, economics, and finance,
he was immediately in conflict with his hopes to study mathematics. He
resolved the conflict by paying little heed to his planned course of study, but
continued private study in mathematics. The outcome was to leave the
university without a degree. After that he studied mathematics at the Mnster
Academy (which was even at this time very famous for mathematics) and his
father was able to obtain a place for him in a teacher training school in
Mnster. Later he was certified as a teacher in that city. During this period of
study, Weierstrass attended the lectures of Christoph Gudermann and
became interested in elliptic functions.
In 1843 he taught in Deutsch Krone in West Prussia and since 1848 he
taught at the Lyceum Hosianum in Braunsberg. Besides mathematics he also
taught physics, botanics and gymnastics.[1]
Weierstrass may have had an illegitimate child named Franz with the widow
of his friend Carl Wilhelm Borchardt.[2]
After 1850 Weierstrass suffered from a long period of illness, but was able to
publish papers that brought him fame and distinction. The University of
Knigsberg conferred an honorary doctor's degree on him on 31 March 1854.
In 1856 he took a chair at the Gewerbeinstitut, which later became the

Technical University of Berlin. In 1864 he became professor at the FriedrichWilhelms-Universitt Berlin, which later became the Humboldt Universitt zu
Berlin. He was immobile for the last three years of his life, and died in Berlin
from pneumonia.

Mathematical contributions[edit]
Soundness of calculus[edit]

Weierstrass was interested in the soundness of calculus, and at the time,


there were somewhat ambiguous definitions regarding the foundations of
calculus, and hence important theorems could not be proven with sufficient
rigour. While Bolzano had developed a reasonably rigorous definition of a
limit as early as 1817 (and possibly even earlier) his work remained unknown
to most of the mathematical community until years later, and many
mathematicians had only vague definitions of limits and continuity of
functions.
Delta-epsilon proofs are first found in the works of Cauchy in the 1820s.[3][4]
Cauchy did not clearly distinguish between continuity and uniform continuity
on an interval. Notably, in his 1821 Cours d'analyse, Cauchy argued that the
(pointwise) limit of (pointwise) continuous functions was itself (pointwise)
continuous, a statement interpreted as being incorrect by many scholars. The
correct statement is rather that the uniform limit of continuous functions is
continuous (also, the uniform limit of uniformly continuous functions is
uniformly continuous). This required the concept of uniform convergence,
which was first observed by Weierstrass's advisor, Christoph Gudermann, in
an 1838 paper, where Gudermann noted the phenomenon but did not define
it or elaborate on it. Weierstrass saw the importance of the concept, and both
formalized it and applied it widely throughout the foundations of calculus.
The formal definition of continuity of a function, as formulated by Weierstrass,
is as follows:

f ( x ) {\displaystyle \displaystyle f(x)}


is continuous at

x=x
0

{\displaystyle \displaystyle x=x_{0}}


if

>
0

>
0
{\displaystyle \displaystyle \forall \ \varepsilon >0\ \exists \ \delta >0}
such that for every

x {\displaystyle x}
in the domain of

f {\displaystyle f}
,

|xx
0

|<|f(x)f(x
0

) | < . {\displaystyle \displaystyle \ |x-x_{0}|<\delta \Rightarrow |


f(x)-f(x_{0})|<\varepsilon .}
In simple English,

f ( x ) {\displaystyle \displaystyle f(x)}


is continuous at a point

x=x
0

{\displaystyle \displaystyle x=x_{0}}


if for each

>
0

{\displaystyle \varepsilon >0\ }


there exists a

>
0

{\displaystyle \delta >0}


such that the function

f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)}
lies between

f(x
0

) {\displaystyle f(x_{0})-\varepsilon }
and

f(x
0

) + {\displaystyle f(x_{0})+\varepsilon }
when

x {\displaystyle x}
is between

x
0

{\displaystyle x_{0}-\delta }
and

x
0

+ {\displaystyle x_{0}+\delta }
.
Using this definition, he proved the Intermediate Value Theorem. He also
proved the BolzanoWeierstrass theorem and used it to study the properties
of continuous functions on closed and bounded intervals.

Calculus of variations[edit]
Weierstrass also made significant advancements in the field of calculus of
variations. Using the apparatus of analysis that he helped to develop,
Weierstrass was able to give a complete reformulation of the theory which
paved the way for the modern study of the calculus of variations. Among the
several significant axioms, Weierstrass established a necessary condition for
the existence of strong extrema of variational problems. He also helped
devise the WeierstrassErdmann condition, which gives sufficient conditions
for an extremal to have a corner along a given extrema, and allows one to
find a minimizing curve for a given integral.

Other analytical theorems[edit]

See also List of things named after Karl Weierstrass.


StoneWeierstrass theorem
WeierstrassCasorati theorem
Weierstrass's elliptic functions
Weierstrass function
Weierstrass M-test
Weierstrass preparation theorem
LindemannWeierstrass theorem
Weierstrass factorization theorem
EnneperWeierstrass parameterization
SokhatskyWeierstrass theorem

Students[edit]

Edmund Husserl
Sofia Kovalevskaya
Gsta Mittag-Leffler
Hermann Schwarz
Carl Johannes Thomae
Georg Cantor

Honours and awards[edit]


The lunar crater Weierstrass and the asteroid 14100 Weierstrass are named
after him. Also, there is the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and
Stochastics in Berlin.

Selected works[edit]

Zur Theorie der Abelschen Funktionen (1854)


Theorie der Abelschen Funktionen (1856)
Abhandlungen-1, Math. Werke. Bd. 1. Berlin, 1894
Abhandlungen-2, Math. Werke. Bd. 2. Berlin, 1895
Abhandlungen-3, Math. Werke. Bd. 3. Berlin, 1903
Vorl. ueber die Theorie der Abelschen Transcendenten, Math. Werke.
Bd. 4. Berlin, 1902
Vorl. ueber Variationsrechnung, Math. Werke. Bd. 7. Leipzig, 1927

List of things named after Karl Weierstrass

^ Jump up to:
a b O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E. F. (October 1998). "Karl Theodor Wilhelm
Weierstrass". School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews,
Scotland. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
Jump up
^ Biermann, Kurt-R.; Schubring, Gert (1996). "Einige Nachtrge zur
Biographie von Karl Weierstra. (German) [Some postscripts to the

See also[edit]

References[edit]

biography of Karl Weierstrass]". History of mathematics. San Diego, CA:


Academic Press. pp.6591.
Jump up
^ Grabiner, Judith V. (March 1983), "Who Gave You the Epsilon? Cauchy and
the Origins of Rigorous Calculus" (PDF), The American Mathematical Monthly,
90 (3): 185194, doi:10.2307/2975545, JSTOR2975545
Jump up
^ Cauchy, A.-L. (1823), "Septime Leon Valeurs de quelques expressions
qui se prsentent sous les formes indtermines , 0

, {\displaystyle {\frac {\infty }{\infty }},\infty ^{0},\ldots }

Relation qui existe entre le rapport aux diffrences finies et la fonction


drive", Rsum des leons donnes lcole royale polytechnique sur le
calcul infinitsimal, Paris, p. 44.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karl Weierstrass.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Karl Weierstrass

O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Karl Weierstrass", MacTutor


History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
Karl Weierstrass at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Digitalized versions of Weierstrass's original publications are freely
available online from the library of the Berlin Brandenburgische
Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Works by Karl Weierstrass at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Karl Weierstrass at Internet Archive

[hide]

vte

Copley Medallists of 18511900

Richard Owen (1851) Alexander von Humboldt (1852) Heinrich Wilhelm Dove
(1853) Johannes Peter Mller (1854) Lon Foucault (1855) Henri Milne-Edwards
(1856) Michel Eugne Chevreul (1857) Charles Lyell (1858) Wilhelm Eduard Weber
(1859) Robert Bunsen (1860) Louis Agassiz (1861) Thomas Graham (1862) Adam
Sedgwick (1863) Charles Darwin (1864) Michel Chasles (1865) Julius Plcker
(1866) Karl Ernst von Baer (1867) Charles Wheatstone (1868) Henri Victor
Regnault (1869) James Prescott Joule (1870) Julius Robert von Mayer (1871)
Friedrich Whler (1872) Hermann von Helmholtz (1873) Louis Pasteur (1874)
August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1875) Claude Bernard (1876) James Dwight Dana
(1877) Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1878) Rudolf Clausius (1879) James Joseph
Sylvester (1880) Charles-Adolphe Wurtz (1881) Arthur Cayley (1882) William

Thomson (1883) Carl Ludwig (1884) Friedrich August Kekul von Stradonitz (1885)
Franz Ernst Neumann (1886) Joseph Dalton Hooker (1887) Thomas Henry Huxley
(1888) George Salmon (1889) Simon Newcomb (1890) Stanislao Cannizzaro
(1891) Rudolf Virchow (1892) George Gabriel Stokes (1893) Edward Frankland
(1894) Karl Weierstrass (1895) Karl Gegenbaur (1896) Albert von Klliker (1897)
William Huggins (1898) John William Strutt (1899) Marcellin Berthelot (1900)

173150 17511800 180150 18511900 190150 19512000 2001present


Authority control
WorldCat Identities VIAF: 36999173 LCCN: n84806249 ISNI: 0000 0001 0888 2405
GND: 11876618X SELIBR: 238824 SUDOC: 033951403 BNF: cb12381741c (data)
MGP: 7486 NLA: 36508857 NKC: mzk2002148067

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Categories: 1815 births1897 deathsGerman mathematicians19thcentury German mathematiciansMathematical analystsPeople from the
Province of WestphaliaPeople from BraniewoRecipients of the Copley
MedalUniversity of Bonn alumniUniversity of Knigsberg
alumniUniversity of Mnster alumniHumboldt University of Berlin
facultyTechnical University of Berlin facultyForeign Members of the
Royal SocietyCorresponding Members of the St Petersburg Academy of
SciencesHonorary Members of the St Petersburg Academy of
SciencesGerman Roman Catholics

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