Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (Weierstraß) (October 31, 1815 – February 19, 1897) was a German mathematician who is often cited as the "father of modern analysis".

Biography

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Karl Weierstrass was born in Ostenfelde, Westphalia (today Germany).

He was the son of Wilhelm Weierstrass, a government official, and Theodora Vonderforst. His interest in mathematics began while he was a gymnasium student, and was sent to the University of Bonn upon graduation to prepare for a government position. Because his studies were to be in the fields of law, economics, and finance, he was immediately in conflict with his hopes to study mathematics. He resolved the conflict by paying little heed to his planned course of study, but continued private study in mathematics. The outcome was leaving the university without a degree. After that he studied mathematics at the University of Münster which was even to this time very famous for mathematics and his father was able to obtain a place for him in a teacher training school in Münster, and he later was certified as a teacher in that city. During this period of study, Weierstrass attended the lectures of Christoph Gudermann and became interested in elliptic functions.

After 1850 Weierstrass suffered from a long period of illness, but was able to publish papers that brought him fame and distinction. In 1857 he took the chair of mathematics at the University of Berlin. He was immobile for the last three years of his life, and died in Berlin from pneumonia.

Soundness of calculus

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Weierstrass was interested in the soundness of calculus. At the time, there were no unambiguous definitions regarding the fundaments of calculus, hence theorems could not be properly proven. While Bolzano had developed a reasonably rigorous definition of a limit as early as 1817 (and possibly even earlier) his work remained unknown to most of the mathematical community until years later, and other eminent mathematicians such as Cauchy had only vague definitions of limits and continuity of functions. Weierstrass defined continuity as follows:

$f(x)$ is continuous at $x\; =\; x\_0$ if for every $\backslash varepsilon\; >\; 0$ there exists $\backslash delta\; >\; 0$ such that

Weierstrass also formulated similar definitions of limit and derivative still taught today.

With these new definitions he was able to write proofs of several at the time unproven theorems such as the intermediate value theorem, Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem and Heine-Borel theorem.

Selected papers

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• Zur Theorie der Abelschen Functionen (1854)
• Theorie der Abelschen Functionen (1856)

Students of Karl Weierstrass

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• Sofia Kovalevskaya
• Gösta Mittag-Leffler

See also

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• Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem
  • Heine-Borel theorem
• Stone-Weierstrass theorem
• Weierstrass-Casorati theorem
• Weierstrass's elliptic functions
• Weierstrass function
• Weierstrass M-test
• Weierstrass preparation theorem
• Lindemann-Weierstrass theorem
• Weierstrass factorization theorem
• Enneper-Weierstrass parameterization

External links

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• Digitalized versions of Weierstraß' original publications are freely available online from the library of the Berlin Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

1815 births | 1897 deaths | German mathematicians

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