19 Facts About Sophus Lie

Sophus Lie largely created the theory of continuous symmetry and applied it to the study of geometry and differential equations.

Sophus Lie made substantial contributions to the development of algebra.

Marius Sophus Lie was born on 17 December 1842 in the small town of Nordfjordeid.

Sophus Lie was the youngest of six children born to Lutheran pastor Johann Herman Lie and his wife, who came from a well-known Trondheim family.

Sophus Lie had his primary education in the south-eastern coast of Moss, before attending high school in Oslo.

When he left Berlin, Lie travelled to Paris, where he was joined by Klein two months later.

Sophus Lie left for Fontainebleau where he was arrested, suspected of being a German spy, garnering him fame in Norway.

Sophus Lie was released from prison after a month, thanks to the intervention of Darboux.

Sophus Lie obtained his PhD at the University of Christiania in 1871 with a thesis entitled Over en Classe geometriske Transformationer.

That same year, Sophus Lie visited Klein, who was then at Erlangen and working on the Erlangen program.

In 1872, Sophus Lie spent eight months together with Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow, editing and publishing the mathematical works of their countryman, Niels Henrik Abel.

Engel would help Sophus Lie to write his most important treatise, Theorie der Transformationsgruppen, published in Leipzig in three volumes from 1888 to 1893.

In 1886, Sophus Lie became a professor at Leipzig, replacing Klein, who had moved to Gottingen.

In November 1889, Sophus Lie suffered a mental breakdown and had to be hospitalized until June 1890.

Sophus Lie was made Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society in 1878, Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1892, Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in 1895 and foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in 1895.

However, the subject of Lie groups as it is studied today is vastly different from what the research by Sophus Lie was about and "among the 19th century masters, Lie's work is in detail certainly the least known today".

Sophus Lie was an eager proponent in the establishment of the Abel Prize.

Sophus Lie gathered support for the establishment of an award for outstanding work in pure mathematics.

Sophus Lie advised many doctoral students who went on to become successful mathematicians.