Heinrich Burkhardt

Heinrich Friedrich Karl Ludwig Burkhardt (15 October 1861 – 2 November 1914) was a German mathematician. He famously was one of the two examiners of Albert Einstein's PhD thesis Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen.[1] Of Einstein's thesis he stated: "The mode of treatment demonstrates fundamental mastery of the relevant mathematical methods" and "What I checked, I found to be correct without exception."[2]

Heinrich Burkhardt
Heinrich Burkhardt
Born(1861-10-15)15 October 1861
Schweinfurt, Kingdom of Bavaria
Died2 November 1914(1914-11-02) (aged 53)
Munich, German Empire
NationalityGerman
Alma materTechnical University of Munich (1879–81)
University of Berlin (1881–82)
University of Munich (1882–83, 1885–86)
University of Göttingen (1883–84)
Known forBurkhardt quartic
Burkhardt group
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
Doctoral advisorGustav Conrad Bauer

Biography

Burkhardt was born in Schweinfurt. Starting from 1879 he studied under Karl Weierstrass, Alexander von Brill, and Hermann Amandus Schwarz in Munich (at university and technical university), Berlin and Göttingen. He attained a doctorate in 1886 in Munich under Gustav Conrad Bauer with a thesis entitled: Beziehungen zwischen der Invariantentheorie und der Theorie algebraischer Integrale und ihrer Umkehrungen (Relations between the invariant theory and the theory of algebraic integrals and their inverses).

In 1887, he was an assistant at Göttingen and obtained his habilitation there in 1889. Later, he was a professor in Zürich (1897–1908) and Munich (since October 1908). He worked on the theory of the elliptical functions, series expansions, group theory, the Burkhardt quartic, and history of mathematics.

He died in Neuwittelsbach/München, of a disease of the stomach, diagnosed about Easter 1914.

Works

See also

References
  1. Einstein, Albert (1905). Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen (PDF) (Thesis). Bern: Wyss. doi:10.3929/ethz-a-000565688. hdl:20.500.11850/139872; Dissertation Univ. Zürich, Referee: A. Kleiner, Co-referee: H. Burkhardt{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  2. Expert Opinion by Alfred Kleiner and Heinrich Burkhardt on Einstein's Dissertation [Zurich, 22-23 July 1905], collected in Volume 5: The Swiss Years: Correspondence, 1902-1914 (English translation supplement) Page 22.
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