Leo Königsberger

Leo Königsberger (15 October 1837 – 15 December 1921) was a German mathematician, and historian of science. He is best known for his three-volume biography of Hermann von Helmholtz, which remains the standard reference on the subject.

Biography
Königsberger was born in Posen (now Poznań, Poland), the son of a successful merchant. He studied at the University of Berlin with Karl Weierstrass, where he taught mathematics and physics (1860–64). He taught at the University of Greifswald (assistant professor, 1864–66; professor, 1866–69), the University of Heidelberg (1869–75), the Technische Universität Dresden (1875-77), and the University of Vienna (1877–84) before returning to Heidelberg in 1884, where remained until his retirement in 1914.

In 1904 he was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in Heidelberg. In 1919 he published his autobiography, Mein Leben ('My Life'). The biography of Helmholtz was published in 1902 and 1903. He also wrote a biography of C. G. J. Jacobi.

Königsberger's own research was primarily on elliptic functions and differential equations. He worked closely with Lazarus Fuchs, a childhood friend.

Selected publications

 * Vorlesungen über die Theorie der elliptischen Functionen, nebst einer Einleitung in die allgemeine Functionenlehre
 * Vorlesungen über die Theorie der hyperelliptischen Integrale, Teubner 1878, Project Gutenberg
 * Allgemeine Üntersuchungen aus der Theorie der Differentialgleichungen
 * Lehrbuch der Theorie der Differentialgleichungen mit einer unabhängigen Variabeln
 * Zur Geschichte der Theorie der elliptischen Transcendenten in den Jahren 1826–29, Teubner 1879, Project Gutenberg
 * Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Teubner 1904.
 * Mein Leben, Heidelberg 1919. (Erw. Ausgabe. Univ. Heidelberg 2015.)
 * Mein Leben, Heidelberg 1919. (Erw. Ausgabe. Univ. Heidelberg 2015.)