Borchardt

Carl Wilhelm Borchardt

Born: 22 Feb 1817 in Berlin, Germany
Died: 27 June 1880 in Rudersdorf (near Berlin), Germany

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Carl Borchardt was tutored privately by Plücker and Steiner. He studied at Berlin from 1836 under Dirichlet then, in 1839, he went to Königsberg and studied under Bessel, Franz Neumann and Jacobi.

Borchardt's doctoral work, on non-linear differential equations, was supervised by Jacobi. The year 1846-47 Borchardt spent in Paris where he met Chasles, Hermite and Liouville.

Borchardt taught at Berlin from 1848 and succeeded Crelle as editor of Crelle's Journal, a task he undertook from 1856 until 1880 despite not being in very good health.

He did important research on the arithmetic geometric mean continuing work in this area by Gauss and Lagrange. He generalised results of Kummer on equations determining the secular disturbances of the planets. In this work he used determinants and Sturm functions.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. M d'Ocagne, Carl Wilhelm Borchardt et son oevre (Brussels, 1890). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996