Hermann Minkowski

Hermann Minkowski (Alexotas in Russia, today in Lithuania, on June 22nd 1864 - Göttingen 1909) is a Mathématicien and a physicist German theorist .

Biography

He is the junior by three brothers. He makes secondary studies with gymnasium of Königsberg where he points out himself by his results in mathematics. Hermann Minkowski studies at the universities of Berlin and Königsberg. He all in all presents a report on the “decomposition of the integers of five squares” , subject suggested for the Grand Prix of the Academy of Science of Paris of 1881 and gains this last (in company of Henry John Stephen Smith which dies before to have been able to receive the price). He obtains his doctorate in 1885. He teaches in many universities in particular with Bonn, Königsberg or the federal Polytechnic school of Zurich. Albert Einstein is one of its pupils in Zurich.

To Göttingen it follows courses of Mathématiques of David Hilbert. It takes part in a congress on the theory of the electron in 1905 and learns the last results and the last theories in electrodynamic.

In 1907, Minkowski realizes that the work of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Einstein could be included/understood better in a not-Euclidean space. He thus studies the space and the Temps, which one had the practice to dissociate, for finally joining together them in a “continuum Espace-temps” with 4 dimensions. This space-time continuum, now called Space of Minkowski, is the base of all work on the Theory of relativity. These ideas were used by Einstein to develop the theory of the General relativity.

Its “original” work more is without any doubt its geometry of the numbers. This work raises many questions about the space saver, or how to make return a form given inside an other given form.

He dies suddenly at the 44 years age of a rupture of the appendix.

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