Person: Amsler, Jacob

Jakob Amsler-Laffon was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, engineer and inventor.

Amsler studied theology first at the University of Jena and then at the University of Königsberg.
It was at Königsberg that Amsler changed his course from theology to mathematics and physics.
The teacher who changed Amsler's future was Franz Neumann whose lectures and laboratory sessions he attended at the University of Königsberg.
In 1848 Amsler was awarded his doctorate from the University of Königsberg and he then returned to Switzerland to continue his education.
Back in Switzerland, Amsler worked for a year at the observatory in Geneva.
In 1851, wishing to have more time to devote to his research, Amsler took a position at the Gymnasium in Schaffhausen, a town in northern Switzerland situated on the bank of the Rhine.
Amsler extended the theorems of both Ivory and Poisson on this topic.
Shortly after his marriage Amsler changed his research interests and his career.
In 1856 Amsler published a paper Über das Planimeter Ⓣ(On the planimeter) in which he gave details of his idea.
In order to make money from his invention, Amsler set up a workshop in Schaffhausen in 1854 specially designed to produce his polar planimeter.
Amsler did not rest his fame on this single inspired idea but continued to invent new precision instruments.

Born 16 November 1823, Stalden bei Brugg, Switzerland. Died 3 January 1912, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Switzerland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive