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Julius Plücker was educated at Heidelberg, Berlin and Paris. He was appointed to Bonn in 1829, and became professor of mathematics at Halle in 1834, then at Bonn in 1836. He made important contributions to analytic geometry and physics.
He initiated the investigation of geometrical configurations associated with line complexes. In this way of specifying coordinates a point has a linear equation, namely that of all lines through the point while a line has a pair of numbers namely the x and y coordinates of where it cuts the axes.
His work on combinatorics considers Steiner type systems. He also introduced the notion of a ruled surface. In 1847 he turned to physics, accepting the chair of physics at Bonn working on magnetism, electronics and atomic physics. He anticipated Kirchhoff and Bunsen in indicating that spectral lines were characteristic for each chemical substance.
In 1865 he returned to mathematics and Klein
served as his assistant 1866-1868.
Texto original por: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
| List of References (8 books/articles)
| |
| A Poster of Julius Plücker | Mathematicians born in the same country
|
| Cross-references to History Topics | An
overview of the history of mathematics |
| Cross-references to Famous
Curves | Trident
of Newton |
| Other references in MacTutor | |
| Honours awarded to Julius
Plücker (Click a link below for the full list of mathematicians honoured in this way) | |
| Fellow of the Royal Society | Elected 1855 |
| Royal Society Copley Medal | Awarded 1866 |
| JOC/EFR December 1996 | School of
Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland | 
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| The URL of this page
is: http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Plucker.htm | ||