Elwin Bruno Christoffel

Elwin Bruno Christoffel

Elwin Bruno Christoffel (November 10, 1829 in Montjoie, now called Monschau – March 15, 1900 in Strasbourg) was a German mathematician and physicist.

Life

Christoffel attended the Jesuit Gymnasium and Friedrich-Wilhelms Gymnasium in Cologne and studied at the University of Berlin with Dirichlet, among others, where he received a doctorate in 1856 for a thesis on the motion of electricity in homogeous bodies. In 1859, Christoffel became a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin. In 1862 he was appointed to a chair at the Polytechnic School in Zurich left vacant by Dedekind. After moving to the Gewerbeakademie in Berlin (now part of the Technical University of Berlin) in 1869, Christoffel became a professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1872, where he remained until retiring in 1894.

Work

Christoffel worked on conformal maps, potential theory, invariant theory, tensor analysis, mathematical physics, geodesy, and shock waves. The Christoffel symbol, Riemann–Christoffel tensor, Christoffel–Darboux formula, and Schwarz–Christoffel mapping are named after him.

References

• P.L. Butzer & F. Feher (editors) EB Christoffel: the influence of his work on mathematics and the physical sciences, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1981 ISBN 3-7643-1162-2.
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Elwin Bruno Christoffel", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
• Elwin Bruno Christoffel at the Mathematics Genealogy Project