Carl David Tolmé Runge (; 30 August 1856 – 3 January 1927) was a German Reich mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist.
He was co-developer and co-eponym of the Runge–Kutta method (), in the field of what is today known as numerical analysis.
Life and work
Runge spent the first few years of his life in
Havana, where his father Julius Runge was the Danish consul. His mother was Fanny Schwartz Tolmé.
The family later moved to Bremen, where his father died early (in 1864).
In 1880, he received his Ph.D. in mathematics at Berlin, where he studied under Karl Weierstrass. In 1886, he became a professor at the Technische Hochschule Hannover in Hanover, Germany.
His interests included mathematics, spectroscopy, geodesy, and astrophysics. In addition to pure mathematics, he did experimental work studying of various elements (together with Heinrich Kayser), and was very interested in the application of this work to astronomical spectroscopy.
In 1904, on the initiative of Felix Klein he received a call to the University of Göttingen, which he accepted. There he remained until his retirement in 1925.
Family
His daughter
Iris Runge also became a mathematician and his son
Wilhelm Runge was an early developer of radar. Another of his daughters, Nerina (Nina), married the mathematician
Richard Courant.
Honors
The
crater Runge on the
Moon is named after him.
The Schumann–Runge bands of molecular oxygen are named after him and
Victor Schumann.
See also
-
Runge's law
-
Runge's method for Diophantine equations.
Works
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Ueber die Krümmung, Torsion und geodätische Krümmung der auf einer Fläche gezogenen Curven (PhD dissertation, Friese, 1880)
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Praxis der Gleichungen (G.J. Göschen, Leipzig, 1900)
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Analytische Geometrie der Ebene (B.G. Teubner, Leipzig, 1908)
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Graphical methods; a course of lectures delivered in Columbia university, New York, October, 1909, to January, 1910 (Columbia University Press, New York, 1912)
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Graphische Methoden (Teubner, 1912)
-
Vektoranalysis (S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1919)
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Vector Analysis (Methuen & Co., London, 1923); translated from 1919 German original by H. Levy
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Carl Runge und Hermann König: Vorlesungen über numerisches Rechnen (Springer, Heidelberg, 1924)
Bibliography
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Iris Runge: Carl Runge und sein wissenschaftliches Werk, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1949.
External links
