Elwin Bruno Christoffel (∗November 10th, 1829 in Montjoie (now Monschau), Prussia; †March 15th, 1900 in Strasbourg, German Empire) was a mathematician and physicist introducing fundamental concepts of differential geometry and opening the way of tensor calculus.
Early Years and Education
Christoffel was born in a family of cloth merchants. He was initially educated at home in languages and mathematics. Later he attended the Jesuit Gymnasium and the Friedrich-Wilhelms Gymnasium in Cologne. In 1850 he entered the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin for studying mathematics. Among his supervisors was Gustav Dirichlet which had a strong influence on him. In addition to mathematics, he passed also courses in physics and chemistry. He received his doctorate in Berlin in 1856 for a thesis on the motion of electricity in homogeneous bodies. The supervisors of his doctoral theses were Martin Ohm, Ernst Kummer, and Heinrich Gustav Magnus. After that he returned to Montjoie for 3 years. During...
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Altenbach, H. (2018). Christoffel, Elwin Bruno. In: Altenbach, H., Öchsner, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Continuum Mechanics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53605-6_115-1
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