Sturm

Jacques Charles Francois Sturm

Born: 22 Sept 1803 in Geneva, Switzerland
Died: 18 Dec 1855 in Paris, France

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Charles-Francois Sturm made the first accurate determination of the velocity of sound in water, in 1826, working with the Swiss engineer Daniel Colladon. He became a French citizen in 1833 and worked in Paris at the École Polytechnique where he became a professor in 1838. In 1840 he succeeded Poisson in the chair of mechanics in the Faculté des Sciences, Paris.

Sturm is best remembered for the Sturm- Liouville problem, an eigenvalue problem in second order differential equation. Published in 1834, this work on the theory of differential equations won him awards in France.

He worked on infinitesimal geometry, differential equations, the roots of equations, projective geometry and the differential geometry of curves and surfaces. He was much influenced by Fourier with whom he corresponded. He studied heat diffusion and, although his work remained unpublished, it led to his famous results on the number of zeros of a polynomial on an interval in Mémoire sur la résolution des équations numériques (1829). Cauchy had earlier discovered this result but his methods were much inferior to those of Sturm.

Sturm also did important work on geometrical optics. , His widely used texts Cours d'analyse de l'École Polytechnique 2 Vol. (1857-63) and Cours de méchanique de l'École Polytechnique 2 Vol. (1861) were published posthumously.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Sturm's work on matrices and determinants

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. G Loria, Charles Sturm et son oeuvre mathématique, Enseignement mathématique 37 (1938), 249-274.
  4. P Speziali, Charles-Francois Sturm (1803-1855) : documents inedits (Paris, 1964). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996