Hermann Minkowski

German mathematician and physicist (1864–1909)

Hermann Minkowski (22 June 1864 in Kaunas – 12 January 1909 in Göttingen) was a German mathematician of Jewish descent.[1] He was one of Albert Einstein's teachers.

Hermann Minkowski
Born(1864-06-22)22 June 1864
Aleksota (nowadays part of Kaunas), Russian Empire
Died12 January 1909(1909-01-12) (aged 44)
NationalityGerman
Alma materAlbertina University of Königsberg
Known forMinkowski space
Minkowski diagram
Scientific career
FieldsMathematician
InstitutionsUniversity of Göttingen and ETH Zurich

Minkowski is perhaps best known for his work in relativity, in which he showed in 1907 that his former student Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905), could be understood geometrically as a theory of four-dimensional space-time, since known as the "Minkowski spacetime".[2][3]

References

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  1. www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk
  2. Minkowski, Hermann (1907/1915). Das Relativitätsprinzip. Annalen der Physik 352 (15): 927–938.
  3. H.A. Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski and Hermann Weyl 1952. The principle of relativity: a collection of original memoirs. New York: Dover.