Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

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Lejeune Dirichlet
Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
Born February 13, 1805 (1805-02-13)
Düren, French Empire
Died May 5, 1859 (aged 54)
Göttingen, Hanover
Residence Germany
Nationality German
Fields Mathematician
Institutions University of Berlin
University of Breslau
University of Göttingen
Alma mater University of Bonn
Doctoral advisor Simeon Poisson
Joseph Fourier
Doctoral students Ferdinand Eisenstein
Leopold Kronecker
Rudolf Lipschitz
Carl Wilhelm Borchardt
Known for Dirichlet function
Dirichlet eta function

Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet [ləˈʒœn diʀiˈçle] (February 13, 1805May 5, 1859) was a German mathematician credited with the modern "formal" definition of a function.

His family hailed from the town of Richelette in Belgium, from which his surname "Lejeune Dirichlet" ("le jeune de Richelette", French for "the young chap from Richelette") was derived.[1] That was also where his grandfather lived.

Dirichlet was born in Düren, where his father was the postmaster. He learned from Georg Ohm at the Jesuit gymnasium in Cologne. His first paper was on Fermat's last theorem comprising a partial proof for the case n = 5, which was completed by Adrien-Marie Legendre, who was one of the referees. Dirichlet also completed his own proof almost at the same time; he later also produced a full proof for the case n = 14.

He graduated from the University of Bonn in 1827 and taught as a Privatdozent at the University of Breslau, later teaching at the University of Berlin. In 1855 Dirichlet began teaching at the University of Göttingen.

In 1831, he married Rebecca Henriette Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who came from a distinguished family of converts from Judaism to Christianity; she was a granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, daughter of Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and a sister of the composers Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Fanny Mendelssohn.

Ferdinand Eisenstein, Leopold Kronecker, and Rudolf Lipschitz were his students. After his death, Dirichlet's lectures and other results in number theory were collected, edited and published by his friend and fellow mathematician Richard Dedekind under the title Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (Lectures on Number Theory).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Elstrodt, Jürgen (2007). The Life and Work of Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859) (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-12-25.

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Dirichlet, Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Düren
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1859
PLACE OF DEATH Göttingen