Hermann Graßmann

Hermann Günther Graßmann was one of the most remarkable personalities in 19th-century science. A "small-town genius", he developed a groundbreaking n-dimensional algebra of space and contributed to a revolution in the understanding of mathematics. His work fascinated great mathematicians such as W. R. Hamilton, J. W. Gibbs and A. N. Whitehead. This intellectual biography traces Graßmann s steps towards scientific brilliance by untangling a complicated web of influences: the force of unsolved problems in mathematics, Friedrich Schleiermacher s Dialectic, German Romanticism and life in 19th-century Prussia. The book also introduces the reader to the details of Graßmann s mathematical work without neglecting his achievements in Sanskrit philology and physics. And, for the first time, it makes many original sources accessible to the English-language reader.