Philipp Frank, Richard von Mises, and the Frank-Mises
Abstract
The theoretical physicist Philipp Frank (1884 1966) and the applied mathematician Richard von Mises (1883 1953) both received their university education in Vienna shortly after 1900 and became friends at the latest during the Great War.They were attached to the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists and wrote an influential two-part work on the differential and integral equations of mechanics and physics, the Frank-Mises, of 1925 and 1927, with its second edition following in 1930 and 1935.This work originated in the lectures that the mathematician Bernhard Riemann (1826 1866) delivered on partial differential equations and their applications to physical questions at the University of Göttingen between 1854 and 1862, which were edited and published posthumously in1869 by the physicist Karl Hattendorff (1834 1882).The immediate precursor of the Frank-Mises, however, was the extensive revision of Hattendorff’s edition of Riemann’s lectures that the mathematician Heinrich Weber (1842 1913) published in two volumes, the Riemann-Weber, of 1900 and 1901, with its second edition following in 1910 and 1912. I trace this historical lineage, explore the nature and contents of the Frank-Mises, and discuss its complementary relationship to the first volume of the text that the mathematicians Richard Courant (1888 1972) and David Hilbert (1862 1943) published on the methods of mathematical physics in 1924, the Courant-Hilbert,which, when it and its second volume of 1937 were translated into English and extensively revised in 1953 and 1961, eclipsed the classic Frank-Mises.
- Publication:
-
Physics in Perspective
- Pub Date:
- January 2007
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s00016-006-0288-0
- Bibcode:
- 2007PhP.....9...26S
- Keywords:
-
- Philipp Frank;
- Richard von Mises;
- Bernhard Riemann;
- Heinrich Weber;
- Richard Courant;
- David Hilbert;
- Otto Neurath;
- Guido Beck;
- Vienna Circle;
- University of Vienna;
- Technical University in Vienna;
- German University of Prague;
- Technical University in Brü
- nn;
- University of Istanbul;
- University of Gö
- ttingen;
- University of Strassburg;
- University of Berlin;
- Nazi Germany;
- mathematical physics;
- partial differential equations;
- integral equations;
- logical positivism