Nationality Saxon Name August Mobius | Doctoral advisor Johann Pfaff Residence Germany Fields Mathematician | |
 | ||
Alma mater University of LeipzigUniversity of GottingenUniversity of Halle Other academic advisors Carl Friedrich GaussKarl Mollweide Parents Johanne Catharine Christiane Keil, Johann Heinrich Mobius People also search for Carl Friedrich Gauss, Karl Mollweide, Johann Friedrich Pfaff, Hermann Kobold | ||
Institutions University of Leipzig Doctoral students Otto Wilhelm Fiedler | ||
August ferdinand mobius
August Ferdinand Möbius ( [ˈmøːbi̯ʊs]; 17 November 1790 – 26 September 1868) was a German mathematician and theoretical astronomer.
Contents
August ferdinand m bius
Early life and education
Möbius was born in Schulpforta, Saxony-Anhalt, and was descended on his mother's side from religious reformer Martin Luther. He was home-schooled until he was 13 when he attended the College in Schulpforta in 1803 and studied there graduating in 1809. He then enrolled at the University of Leipzig, where he studied astronomy under the mathematician and astronomer, Karl Mollweide. In 1813 he began to study astronomy under the mathematically inclined professor Carl Friedrich Gauss at the University of Göttingen while Gauss was the director of the Göttingen Observatory. From there he went to study with Carl Gauss's instructor, Johann Pfaff at the University of Halle, where he completed his doctoral thesis The occultation of fixed stars in 1815. In 1816 he was appointed as Extraordinary Professor to the "chair of astronomy and higher mechanics" at the University of Leipzig. Möbius died in Leipzig in 1868 at the age of 77. His son Theodor was a noted philologist.
Contributions
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. The Möbius configuration, formed by two mutually inscribed tetrahedra, is also named after him. Möbius was the first to introduce homogeneous coordinates into projective geometry.
Many mathematical concepts are named after him, including the Möbius plane, the Möbius transformations, important in projective geometry, and the Möbius transform of number theory. His interest in number theory led to the important Möbius function μ(n) and the Möbius inversion formula. In Euclidean geometry, he systematically developed the use of signed angles and line segments as a way of simplifying and unifying results.
Collected works
