Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (nonfiction)
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (or Tschirnhausen) (10 April 1651 – 11 October 1708) was a German mathematician, physicist, physician, and philosopher.
He invented the Tschirnhaus transformation, by which he removed certain intermediate terms from a given algebraic equation. It was published in the scientific journal Acta Eruditorum in 1683.
In 1682, Von Tschirnhaus worked out the theory of catacaustics and showed that they were rectifiable. This was the second case in which the envelope of a moving line was determined. One of the catacaustics of a parabola still is known as Tschirnhausen cubic.
In 1696, Johann Bernoulli posed the problem of the brachystochrone to the readers of Acta Eruditorum. Tschirnhaus was one of only five mathematicians to submit a solution. Bernoulli published these contributions (including Tschirnhaus') along with his own in the journal in May of the following year.
Von Tschirnhaus produced various types of lenses and mirrors, some of them are displayed in museums. He erected a large glass works in Saxony, where he constructed burning glasses of unusual perfection and carried on his experiments (1687–1688).
He is considered by some to have been the inventor of European porcelain, an invention long accredited to Johann Friedrich Böttger, but others claim porcelain had been made by English manufacturers at an even earlier date.
His work Medicina mentis sive artis inveniendi praecepta generali (1687) combines methods of deduction with empiricism and shows him to be philosophically connected to the Enlightenment.
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External links
- Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus @ Wikipedia