- Person
- Hermann Minkowski
- Lived
- 1864–1909
- Field
- Mathematics
- From
- German
The story
Hermann Minkowski was born on 22 June 1864 in Aleksotas, then in the Russian Empire and now part of Kaunas in Lithuania. His parents, Lewin Boruch Minkowski, a merchant who helped fund the choral synagogue in Kovno, and Rachel Taubmann, were Jewish. To escape persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire, the family moved to Königsberg in 1872. His older brother Oskar became a noted medical researcher.
Minkowski became one of the leading mathematicians of his age. He shared the Paris Academy's Grand Prix at 18, created the geometry of numbers, and taught at Bonn, Königsberg, Zurich and, from 1902, Göttingen. At the Zurich Polytechnic the young Albert Einstein attended several of his courses.
Einstein's special theory of relativity of 1905 showed that space and time measurements depend on motion, but it still treated them as separate quantities. By 1907 Minkowski realised that the theory could best be understood in a four-dimensional geometry in which space and time are joined into a single continuum, now known as Minkowski spacetime. He reformulated Einstein's theory in this language, a step Einstein at first did not think much of.
He presented the idea in a famous lecture, Raum und Zeit (Space and Time), on 21 September 1908 at the 80th Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in Cologne. He told his audience that from then on space by itself and time by itself would fade into mere shadows, and only a union of the two would remain independent. The lecture was published in 1909. Minkowski did not live to see its influence: he died of appendicitis in Göttingen on 12 January 1909, aged 44. Hilbert remembered him as his best and most dependable friend.
His geometric picture provided the framework for all later mathematical work on relativity, and Einstein built on it in developing general relativity. Historians note that Minkowski, together with Hilbert, helped change Einstein's view of mathematics from a mere tool into a source of creative insight. The asteroid 12493 Minkowski is named in his honour.
Why it matters
Spacetime geometry gave physicists the mathematical framework for relativity and remains the language physicists use to describe space, time and motion.
About Hermann Minkowski
Mathematician who taught the young Einstein and in 1908 fused space and time into a single four-dimensional “spacetime”, the geometry on which relativity still rests.
More about Hermann Minkowski
- Minkowski helped launch the world's maths congressHermann Minkowski helped organise the first International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich in 1897, chairing its arithmetic and algebra section.
- Minkowski rewrote electrodynamics in four dimensionsAt Göttingen Hermann Minkowski worked out a four-dimensional treatment of electrodynamics, recasting the laws of electricity and magnetism for moving bodies.
- Minkowski invented the geometry of numbersHermann Minkowski created the 'geometry of numbers', solving problems about whole numbers by picturing them as points in a grid, published from 1896.
- Minkowski suggested Hilbert's famous list of problemsIn a January 1900 letter, Hermann Minkowski urged David Hilbert to sketch the problems future mathematicians should tackle, inspiring Hilbert's celebrated 23 problems.
- Minkowski's maths guides robots and machine toolsThe Minkowski sum, a way of adding shapes named after Hermann Minkowski, is used in robot motion planning, collision detection and machining.
Sources
- Hermann Minkowski biography MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews
- Hermann Minkowski Wikipedia
- Space and Time (translation of Raum und Zeit) Wikisource
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.