Person: Størmer, Carl

Carl Størmer was a Norwegian mathematician and astrophysicist. In mathematics, he is known for his work in number theory.

Størmer entered the University of Christiana (as Oslo was then called) in 1892.
It is unusual for anyone to publish a paper in the year they enter university as an undergraduate, but this is exactly what Størmer did with a paper on the summation of trigonometric series.
Yet another work which came out in 1902 was a posthumous paper of Sophus Lie, edited by Størmer and Guldberg.
It was a post that Størmer held until 1946 yet, although he did continue to publish the occasional pure mathematics paper during this period, his interests were diverted by a different topic.
Birkeland, one of Størmer's colleagues, had put forward a theory in 1896 that auroras were caused by electrons emitted by the sun which interacted with the earth's magnetic field.
A summary of all of this work appeared in Størmer's book The polar aurora published in 1955.
Certainly Størmer was not the first to photograph an aurora.
Størmer was honoured in many ways: he was elected to several Scandinavian academies, the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences.

Born 3 September 1874, Skien, Norway. Died 13 August 1957, Oslo, Norway.

View full biography at MacTutor

Astronomy, Origin Norway

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

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