Peterson, Karl Mikhailovich

Peterson, Karl Mikhailovich 

(Kārlis Pētersons). Born May 13 (25), 1828, in Riga; died Apr. 19 (May 1), 1881, in Moscow. Russian geometer. Of Latvian nationality.

Peterson graduated in 1852 from the University of Dorpat (Tartu), where he had studied under F. G. Minding. In 1865 he became a teacher of mathematics at the Peter and Paul School in Moscow. Peterson’s works outlined for several decades ahead a program for research on the most important problems of differential geometry. In his study “On the Bending of Surfaces” (1853) Peterson gave the fundamental equations for surfaces earlier than did the Italian mathematicians G. Mainardi and D. Codazzi. In 1868 he introduced the concept of bending and determined the bendings of minimal and parallel surfaces. Peterson was a founding member of the Moscow Mathematical Society.

WORKS

“Ob izgibanii poverkhnostei (Rassuzhdenie K. Petersona na soiskanie stepeni kandidata …).” In Istoriko-matematicheskie issledovaniia, fasc. 5. Moscow, 1952.

REFERENCE

Depman, I. Ia. “Karl Mikhailovich Peterson i ego kandidatskaia dissertatsiia.” In Istoriko-matematicheskie issledovaniia, fasc. 5. Moscow, 1952.