Plücker

Julius Plücker

Born: 16 June 1801 in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), Duchy of Berg (now Germany)
Died: 22 May 1868 in Bonn, Germany

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Plücker was educated at Heidelberg, Berlin and Paris. He was appointed to Bonn in 1829, and became professor of mathematics at Halle in 1834, then at Bonn in 1836. He made important contributions to analytic geometry and physics.

He initiated the investigation of geometrical configurations associated with line complexes. In this way of specifying coordinates a point has a linear equation, namely that of all lines through the point while a line has a pair of numbers namely the x and y coordinates of where it cuts the axes.

His work on combinatorics considers Steiner type systems. He also introduced the notion of a ruled surface. In 1847 he turned to physics, accepting the chair of physics at Bonn working on magnetism, electronics and atomic physics. He anticipated Kirchhoff and Bunsen in indicating that spectral lines were characteristic for each chemical substance.

In 1865 he returned to mathematics and Klein served as his assistant 1866-1888.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Plücker's part in the history of mathematics

Plücker worked on the Trident of Newton

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. W Ernst, Julius Plücker (Bonn, 1933).
  4. A Clebsch, Zum Gedächtnis an Julius Plücker, Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 15 (1872), 1-40.
  5. R Ziegler, Die Geschichte der geometrischen Mechanik im 19. Jahrhundert : eine historisch -systematische Untersuchung von Mobius und Plucker bis zu Klein und Lindemann (Stuttgart, 1985). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996