Philipp Ludwig von Seidel [zah'edəl] (23 October 1821, Zweibrücken, Germany – 13 August 1896, Munich) was a German mathematician. His mother was Julie Reinhold and his father was Justus Christian Felix Seidel.[1]

Lakatos credits von Seidel with discovering, in 1847, the crucial analytic concept of uniform convergence, while analyzing an incorrect proof of Cauchy's.[2]

In 1857, von Seidel decomposed the first order monochromatic aberrations into five constituent aberrations. They are now commonly referred to as the five Seidel Aberrations.

The lunar crater Seidel is named after him.

The Gauss–Seidel method is a useful numerical iterative method for solving linear systems.

References

1. ^ "Philipp Ludwig von Seidel". School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland. May 2000. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Seidel.html.
2. ^ Latakos, Imre (1976). Proofs and Refutations. Cambridge University Press. p. 141.

External links

* Biography of von Seidel at University of St. Andrews