"Some of the groundbreaking work in the treatment of n-dimensional geometry—was carried out by Hermann Günther Grassmann. ...Grassmann was responsible for the creation of an abstract science of "spaces," inside which the usual geometry was only a special case. Grassmann published his pioneering ideas (originating a branch of mathematics known as linear algebra) in 1844, in a book commonly known as Ausdehnungslehre... Grassmann's suggestion that BA = -AB violates one of the sacrosanct laws of arithmetic... Grassmann faced up squarely to this disturbing possibility and invented a new consistent algebra (known as exterior algebra) that allowed for several processes of multiplication and at the same time could handle geometry in any number of dimensions."
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PolymathsMathematicians from GermanyPhysicists from GermanyEducators from GermanyLinguists from Germany
Original Language: English
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Sources
Mario Livio, Is God a Mathematician? (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Grassmann
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Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann (April 15, 1809 – September 26, 1877) was a German polymath, best known as a mathematician and linguist. His mathematical work was little noted until he was in his sixties. He was also a physicist, neohumanist, general scholar, and publisher.
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