Charles Hermite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Hermite (pronounced in IPA, /ˌʃaʁl ɛʁˈmit/, or"air-meet") (December 24, 1822 – January 14, 1901) was a French mathematician who did research on number theory, quadratic forms, invariant theory, orthogonal polynomials, elliptic functions, and algebra.

Hermite polynomials, Hermite normal form, Hermitian operators, and cubic Hermite splines are named in his honor. One of his students was Henri Poincaré.

He was the first to prove that e, the base of natural logarithms, is a transcendental number. His methods were later used by Ferdinand von Lindemann to prove that π is transcendental.

In 1861, when the German mathematician Karl Weierstrass discovered continuous curves that are nowhere differentiable—they possess no tangent at any point—Hermite famously remarked: “I turn aside with a shudder of horror from this lamentable plague of functions which have no derivatives.”

[edit] External links

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Charles Hermite". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Charles Hermite at the Mathematics Genealogy Project