Person: Meders, Alfreds Arnolds Adolfs

Alfreds Meders was a Latvian mathematician who worked on differential geometry and mathematical analysis.

In 1887 Russian was made the language of instruction, instead of German and Estonian, and in 1893 while Meders studied at the University of Dorpat, the Russians made an effort to convert the establishment to a Russian one.
He greatly influenced Meders who graduated from Tartu University's Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in 1895 (notice that Dorpat had changed its name to Tartu by this time).
Two years later Meders was appointed to Riga Polytechnic Institute where at first he was an assistant of K Kupfer, but later became a dozent.
By the time Meders was appointed, therefore, all teaching at the Institute was in Russian.
In 1906 Meders was awarded his masters degree from the University of St Petersburg.
Meders worked on differential geometry and mathematical analysis.
Meders was appointed as a professor at the University of Latvia from the time of its founding.
Meders was also interested in the history of mathematics and he wrote an important paper Direkte und indirekte Beziehungen zwischen Gauss und der Dorpater Universität Ⓣ(Direct and indirect relationships between Gauss and the Tartu University) in 1928.
Meders began teaching at the start of the academic year 1939-40, but being of German origin he found himself on a list of people who were required to be repatriated to Germany.

Born 1 October 1873, Riga, Latvia. Died 28 June 1944, Poznań, Poland.

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Astronomy, Origin Latvia

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

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