Heinrich Schröter


Heinrich Eduard Schröter was a German mathematician, who studied geometry in the tradition of Jakob Steiner.

Life and work

Schröter went to the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in Königsberg, studying mathematics and physics. After graduating from the Gymnasium in 1845, he entered the University of Königsberg to continue the study of mathematics and physics under Jacobi school's Frederick Richelot. After his volunteer year in the military, he went to the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms-University, where he was taught by Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet and Jakob Steiner. In 1854 he received his doctorate in Richelot in Königsberg with a paper on elliptic functions. He then passed the state exam and was qualified as a teacher in 1855 at the University of Breslau. In 1858 he became associate professor in Breslau and in 1861 professor. He died after he fell ill in 1891.
Schröter was influenced by Steiner's lectures, which were available only as note sheets, on synthetic geometry published in 1867. In Die Theorie der Oberflächen of 1880, one of his major works, he studied second order surfaces and third order space curves, continuing Steiner's work. For this work, he received the Steiner Prize of the Berlin Academy and became its corresponding member. He also investigated the third-order surfaces and fourth-order space curves.
One of his students was Rudolf Sturm.

Writings