Subject: [HM] The Mendelssohn-Dirichlet-Hensel connection
From: Hans Lausch (hans.lausch@sci.monash.edu.au)
Date: Mon Dec 20 1999 - 18:09:47 EST
Dear Julio and Walter,
Not only can the Mendelssohn-Dirichlet-Hensel connection extended into
the presence by noting that Walter Hayman is a grandson of Kurt Hensel,
but there is also another mathematical line starting with Mendelssohn:
The philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1728 or 1729 - 1786) had three
surviving sons, his youngest being Nathan (1782-1852). Nathan became a
maker of "mathematical" instruments (workshops in Berlin and in London),
and his magnetic instruments gained the praise of Alexander von
Humboldt. Nathan's daughter Ottilie Ernestine (1819-1848) married Ernst
Eduard Kummer, while their daughter Marie Elisabeth (1842-1921) became
Hermann Schwarz's wife. Roland Percival Sprague (1894-1967, best-known
through the Sprague-Grundy theory of NIM-like games, was a grandson of
Schwarz.
Greetings,
Hans Lausch
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