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Biography
Paul Rudolf Eugen Jahnke (born November 30, 1861 in Berlin, died October 18, 1921 in Berlin ) was a German mathematician.
Jahnke studied mathematics and physics at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he graduated in 1886. In 1889 he received his doctorate in Halle on the Saale under Albert Wangerin on the integration of first-order ordinary differential equations. After that, he was a teacher at secondary schools in Berlin, where he simultaneously in 1901 taught at the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg and in 1905 he became a professor at the Mining Academy in Berlin, which merged in 1916 with the Berlin Institute of Technology. In 1919 he was rector of the Berlin Institute of Technology.
In 1900 Jahnke read a paper at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris. He was editor of the Archives of Mathematics and Physics and contributor to the Yearbook for the Progress of Mathematics. He wrote an early book on vector calculus but is now known primarily for his function tables, which first appeared in 1909. This was also translated into English and was in print into the 1960s. Fritz Emde (Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Stuttgart) contributed to later editions, as did others.
Selected publications
- Jahnke: Vorlesungen über die Vektorenrechnung – mit Anwendungen auf Geometrie, Mechanik und mathematische Physik (lectures on vector analysis, with applications to geometry, mechanics, and mathematical physics), Teubner 1905
- Jahnke (jointly with Fritz Emde): Funktionentafeln mit Formeln und Kurven (tables of functions with formulas and graphs), Teubner. 1909, 1933, 1945, 7. Auflage 1966, edited by Fritz Emde until his death in 1951 and later by Friedrich Lösch as "Tafeln höherer Funktionen." In America, published as Tables of Functions With Formulas and Curves by Eugene Jahnke and Fritz Emde, Dover Jun 1945
- Wilson, Edwin Bidwell (1906). "Review: Vorlesungen über die Vektorenrechnung by Eugen Jahnke" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 12 (7): 352–356. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1906-01350-7.
- Wilson, Edwin Bidwell (1911). "Review of Einführung in die Theorie des Magnetismus by R. Gans; Einführung in die Maxwellsche Theorie der Elehtrizität und des Magnetismus by Cl. Schaefer; and Funktionentafeln mit Formeln und Kurven by E. Jahnke and F. Emde. Leipzig, Teubner, 1909. xii + 176 pp." (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 17 (7): 350–361. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1911-02073-0.