du Bois-Reymond

Paul David Gustav Du Bois-Reymond

Born: 2 Dec 1831 in Berlin, Germany
Died: 7 April 1889 in Freiburg, Germany

Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page
Paul du Bois-Reymond was a brother of the famous physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond and studied at Berlin and then medicine at Zurich. Moving to Königsberg he was influenced by Franz Neumann to change to mathematics. After a doctorate from Berlin he held chairs in Heidelberg, Freiburg and Tübingen where he succeeded Hankel. Finally he was appointed to a chair in Berlin.

His work is almost exclusively on calculus, in particular differential equations and functions of a real variable. He generalised Monge's idea of the characteristic of a partial differential equation from 2nd order equations to nth order equations. This work formed a basis of what Lie was to generalise later.

In 1873 he gave a continuous function with divergent Fourier series at any point solving a major problem. The term 'integral equation' is due to Du Bois-Reymond.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. H Weber, Paul du Bois-Reymond, Mathematische Annalen 35 (1890), 457-462.
  3. G H Hardy, Orders of infinity : the calculus of Paul du Bois-Reymond (Cambridge, 1910). 
Previous (Chronologically) Next     Biographies Index

Previous ( Alphabetically) Next          Welcome page

History Topics Index              Famous curves index

Chronologies                           Birthplace Map

Mathematicians of the day  Anniversaries for the year

Search Form   Simple Search Form   Search Suggestions
JOC/EFR February 1996