"As I was reading the extract from your paper in the geometric sum and difference... I was struck by the marvelous similarity between your results and those discoveries which I made even as early as 1832... I conceived the first idea of the geometric sum and difference of two or more lines and also of the geometric product of two or three lines in that year (1832). This idea is in all ways identical to that presented in your paper. But since I was for a long time occupied with entirely different pursuits, I could not develop this idea. It was only in 1839 that I was led back to that idea and pursued this geometrical analysis up to the point where it ought to be applicable to all mechanics. It was possible for me to apply this method of analysis to the theory of tides, and in this I was astounded by the simplicity of the calculations resulting from this method."
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PolymathsMathematicians from GermanyPhysicists from GermanyEducators from GermanyLinguists from Germany
Original Language: English
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Letter to Saint-Venant (1845) as quoted by Michael J. Crowe, A History of Vector Analysis: The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System (1967)
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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