Obituaries on Berlin mathematicians of the 19th century. Together with photos, documents, and archivals. Edited by H. Reichardt. (Nachrufe auf Berliner Mathematiker des 19. Jahrhunderts. Mit Fotos, Dokumenten und Archivalien. Hrsg. von H. Reichardt.) (German) Zbl 0667.01006

Teubner-Archiv zur Mathematik, 10. Leipzig: BSB B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft. ca. 166 S. DM 39.00 (1988).

The well known series \(``Teubner=Archiv''\) is continued with 5 obituaries, all of them written by famous mathematicians. These obituaries had been published previously in different journals:
1. “J. Reine Angew. Math.” (Dirichlet: obituary on Jacobi),
2. and 4. “Abh. Akad. Wiss. Berlin” (Kummer: obituary on Dirichlet, Frobenius: on Kronecker),
3. “Abh. Gesch. Math.” (Hensel: centenary celebration of Kummer),
5. “Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Gött.” (Hilbert: obituary on Weierstraß).
The obituaries are of different length, between 10 p. and 37 p. which means some give more details than others. These 5 mathematicians belong to 2 different periods. 1. Jacobi (1804–1851) and Dirichlet (1805–1860) were together with Gauss the most important mathematicians in the first half of the 19th century; Kummer (1810–1893), Kronecker (1823–1891) and Weierstraß (1815–1897) were dominant in the second half. With them Berlin developed into one of the main centers in the scientific world.
The last chapter consists of photographs of 9 documents, which are related with these 5 mathematicians. But these documents are not transcribed or interpreted. At the end the reader finds an index as well as pictures of the 5 mathematicians in question.

Reviewer: Karin Reich (Stuttgart)

MSC:

00B60	Collections of reprinted articles
01A75	Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics
01A55	History of mathematics in the 19th century
01A70	Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
01-01	Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to history and biography

Keywords:

Obituaries; Berlin mathematicians; 19th century; reprints