From -noneofyergoddamnbusiness-
Fri Jun  8 00:07:04 2001
Date: Fri,  1 Jun 2001 00:24:30 -0400
Subject: info on lutherans/mathamaticians


Brian,

Earlier today I was more or less goofing off and so I looked up some 
stuff on Riemann (yeah, I really do do that when I'm bored).  One 
thing that struck me right of was that his father was a Lutheran 
minister (and I remembered I'd seen some refrences to the Zeta 
function on this site).  I kinda doubt it's relevent, but I did some 
quick checking on other mathematicians with ties to the Lutherans.  I 
found quite a few, including the guy who founded IBM.  Like I said, I 
doubt that they are all relevant, but here is what I found in a quick 
search on the web:


Lutheran ties to mathematicians: 

Reimann - Father was a lutheran minister 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Riemann.html 

Mercator - cartographer, mathematician (think the Mercator projection) 
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/measurer/text/mathemat.htm 

Kaestner - 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Kaestner.html 

Bachmann - 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Bachmann.html 

Schickard - built a computing machinge before Pascal - lutheran 
minister, astronomer 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Schickard.html 

Stifel - lived with luther for a time, predicted the end of the world 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Stifel.html 

Engel - son of a lutheran minister - student of Klein 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Engel.html 

Hollerith - developed the first punch card system - founded the 
company that later became ibm 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hollerith.html 

Lie - friends with Klein - father was a Lutheran minister. 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Lie.html 

Kepler - devout lutheran (accomplishments too numerous to mention) 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Kepler.html 

Libniz - Lutheran but wanted to unite christian churches 
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Leibniz.html 

Euler - son of a lutheran minister - accomplishments to numerous to 
mention 

von Neumann studied at a Lutheran school, but seemingly only for the 
quality 
of education. 

Here is a page of quick hit biographies, including Euler's: 
http://www.math.wpi.edu/IQP/BVCalcHist/calc4.html 
 

BTW: I didn't attach this to a specific clue because it doesn't really 
fit just one, does it?