August Ferdinand Möbius

The title of this article contains the character ö. Where it is unavailable or not desired, the name may be represented as Mobius or Moebius.

August Ferdinand Möbius (pronounced /ˈmøbiʊs/, November 17, 1790 - September 26, 1868) was a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. He was born in Schulpforta, Saxony, Germany and died in Leipzig.

A Möbius strip made with a piece of paper and tape.

He is best known for his discovery of the Möbius strip, a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space. It was independently discovered by Johann Benedict Listing around the same time. Möbius was the first to introduce homogeneous coordinates into projective geometry. Möbius transformations, important in projective geometry, are not to be confused with the Möbius transform of number theory, which also bears his name. His interest was also in number theory, and the important Möbius function μ(n) and the Möbius inversion formula are named after him.

Möbius studied under Carl Friedrich Gauss and was a professor at the University of Leipzig.

[edit] Trivia

Möbius was a descendant of Martin Luther by way of his mother.
The character of Johann Wilhelm Möbius - a particular scientist who tries to evade his own inventions by pretending to be insane - in Dürrenmatt's satiric drama The Physicists is named after him.
The asteroid 28516 Möbius is also named after him.
There is a tribute to him in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, in the form on the deathmatch map dm_mobius (which has since spawned various spin-offs such as in the Unreal Tournament series).
He also plays a pivotal part in the Necroscope book series.

O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "August Ferdinand Möbius". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.