31 Facts About Felix Klein

1.

Christian Felix Klein was a German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work with group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the associations between geometry and group theory.

2.

Felix Klein's 1872 Erlangen program, classifying geometries by their basic symmetry groups, was an influential synthesis of much of the mathematics of the time.

3.

Felix Klein was born on 25 April 1849 in Dusseldorf, to Prussian parents.

4.

Felix Klein's father, Caspar Klein, was a Prussian government official's secretary stationed in the Rhine Province.

5.

At that time, Julius Plucker had Bonn's professorship of mathematics and experimental physics, but by the time Klein became his assistant, in 1866, Plucker's interest was mainly geometry.

6.

Felix Klein received his doctorate, supervised by Plucker, from the University of Bonn in 1868.

7.

Felix Klein was the obvious person to complete the second part of Plucker's Neue Geometrie des Raumes, and thus became acquainted with Alfred Clebsch, who had relocated to Gottingen in 1868.

8.

Felix Klein visited Clebsch the next year, along with visits to Berlin and Paris.

9.

Felix Klein did not wish to remain in Erlangen, where there were very few students, and was pleased to be offered a professorship at the Technische Hochschule Munchen in 1875.

10.

In 1875, Felix Klein married Anne Hegel, granddaughter of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

11.

Felix Klein accepted a professorship at the University of Gottingen in 1886.

12.

Felix Klein taught a variety of courses at Gottingen, mainly concerning the interface between mathematics and physics, in particular, mechanics and potential theory.

13.

The research facility Felix Klein established at Gottingen served as model for the best such facilities throughout the world.

14.

Felix Klein introduced weekly discussion meetings, and created a mathematical reading room and library.

15.

In 1895, Felix Klein recruited David Hilbert from the University of Konigsberg.

16.

Felix Klein established a small team of editors who met regularly, making decisions in a democratic spirit.

17.

In 1893, Felix Klein was a major speaker at the International Mathematical Congress held in Chicago as part of the World's Columbian Exposition.

18.

In 1897, Felix Klein became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

19.

Around 1900, Felix Klein began to become interested in mathematical instruction in schools.

20.

In 1908, Felix Klein was elected president of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction at the Rome International Congress of Mathematicians.

21.

Felix Klein was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1885, and was awarded its Copley Medal in 1912.

22.

Felix Klein retired the following year due to ill health, but continued to teach mathematics at his home for several further years.

23.

The concept of a Felix Klein Bottle was devised as a 3-Dimensional Mobius strip, with one method of construction being the attachment of the edges of two Mobius strips.

24.

In 1871, while at Gottingen, Felix Klein made major discoveries in geometry.

25.

Arthur Cayley never accepted Felix Klein's argument, believing it to be circular.

26.

Felix Klein showed how the essential properties of a given geometry could be represented by the group of transformations that preserve those properties.

27.

Felix Klein saw his work on complex analysis as his major contribution to mathematics, specifically his work on:.

28.

Felix Klein showed that the modular group moves the fundamental region of the complex plane so as to tessellate the plane.

29.

Felix Klein succeeded in formulating such a theorem and in describing a strategy for proving it.

30.

Felix Klein came up with his proof during an asthma attack at 2:30 AM on March 23,1882.

31.

Felix Klein summarized his work on automorphic and elliptic modular functions in a four volume treatise, written with Robert Fricke over a period of about 20 years.