Christoph Gudermann

Christoph Gudermann
Born	March 25, 1798(1798-03-25) Vienenburg, Germany
Died	September 25, 1852(1852-09-25) (aged 54) Münster, Westphalia, Germany
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	Münster Academy
Alma mater	University of Göttingen
Doctoral advisor	Carl Gauss
Doctoral students	Karl Weierstrass
Known for	Gudermannian function

Christoph Gudermann (March 25, 1798 – September 25, 1852) was born in Vienenburg. He was the son of a school teacher and became a teacher himself after studying at the University of Göttingen, where his advisor was Karl Friedrich Gauss. He began his teaching career in Kleve and then transferred to a school in Münster.

He is most known today for being the teacher of Karl Weierstrass, who took Gudermann's course in elliptic functions, 1839–1840, the first to be taught in any institute. Weierstrass was greatly influenced by this course, which marked the direction of his own research.

Gudermann originated the concept of uniform convergence, in an 1838 paper on elliptic functions, but only observed it informally, neither formalizing it nor using it in his proofs.^[1] Instead, Weierstrass elaborated and applied uniform convergence.

His researches into spherical geometry and special functions focused on particular cases, so that he did not receive the credit given to those who published more general works. The Gudermannian function, or hyperbolic amplitude, is named after him.

Gudermann died in Münster.

References

1. ^ Jahnke, Hans Niels (2003), "6.7 The Foundation of Analysis in the 19th Century: Weierstrass", A history of analysis, AMS Bookstore, p. 184, ISBN 978 0 82182623 2 

External links

• Christoph Gudermann at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Christoph Gudermann", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Gudermann.html .

Persondata
Name	Gudermann, Christoph
Alternative names
Short description	German mathematician
Date of birth	March 25, 1798
Place of birth	Vienenburg, Germany
Date of death	September 25, 1852
Place of death	Münster, Germany