Person: Meyer, Friedrich Wilhelm Franz

Wilhelm Meyer studied algebraic geometry, algebraic curves and invariant theory.

Meyer presented his habilitation to the University of Tübingen in 1880 and taught there until 1888.
Meyer was appointed as professor of mathematics at the Bergakademie (mining academy) in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the Harz Mountains in 1888.
It is worth noting that Sommerfeld was appointed to fill the chair of mathematics at the mining academy in Clausthal-Zellerfeld when Meyer left in 1897.
As indicated by the thesis which he submitted for his habilitation, the title of which we quoted above, Meyer's interests lie in the study of algebraic geometry, algebraic curves and projective invariant theory.
Meyer's article was very influential and was translated from German into French, Italian and Polish.
Together with Heinrich Weber and Klein, Meyer founded the Encyclopädie der Mathematischen Wissenschaften.
Not only did Meyer play a large role in the planning of this project but he contributed many survey articles to it.
Meyer was an extremely productive mathematician, writing over 130 articles and over 2000 reviews for Fortschritte der Mathematik.
Meyer was unlucky in many ways since the direction in which mathematics developed left his research contributions outside the mainstream.
In particular Hilbert's results on invariant theory were so powerful that they ended a chapter in the development of the subject and so Meyer's many contributions in this area are little remembered today.

Born 2 September 1856, Magdeburg, Germany. Died 11 June 1934, Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia).

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Origin Germany

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

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