This date in 1790 saw the birth of August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician and theoretical astronomer. Here are ten facts about him:
Möbius was born in Schulpforta, Electorate of Saxony. His father was Johann Heinrich Möbius, a dancing teacher who died when August was just three years old. His mother was Johanne Catharine Christiane Keil, who was a descendant of Martin Luther.
He was home schooled until the age of 13, when he went to the College in Schulpforta.
Möbius entered the University of Leipzig in 1809, and initially studied law, as per his family’s wishes. However, he soon found law was not his passion and took up the study of mathematics, astronomy and physics instead.
He narrowly escaped having to serve in the Prussian army. About the attempt to draft him, he wrote: “This is the most horrible idea I have heard of, and anyone who shall venture, dare, hazard, make bold and have the audacity to propose it will not be safe from my dagger.”
The paper which established his reputation was his doctoral thesis, De Computandis Occultationibus Fixarum per Planetas (1815; “Concerning the Calculation of the Occultations of the Planets”).
He was promoted to Extraordinary Professor quite early in his career, but he didn’t reach the giddy heights of full professor for some time. This was because he was quite shy and reserved and not the most brilliant lecturer. He had to advertise his lectures free of charge in order to attract fee paying students.
He’s best known for the Möbius strip, which is a one sided surface produced by giving a narrow strip of material a half-twist before attaching its ends together. Möbius discovered it in 1858, although he wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea. German mathematician Johann Benedict Listing had discovered it a few months earlier, but he didn’t publish his discovery until 1861.
Another thing Möbius is often credited for is the four colour conjecture, which states that four colours are enough to colour in any complex map without having two adjacent areas in the same colour. This was actually put forward by Francis Guthrie, but Möbius had posed a related problem prior to this: “There was once a king with five sons. In his will he stated that on his death his kingdom should be divided by his sons into five regions in such a way that each region should have a common boundary with the other four. Can the terms of the will be satisfied?”
From 1818 to 1821 Möbius supervised the construction of the university’s observatory, and in 1848 he was appointed its director.
In 1820 he married Dorothea Christiane Johanna Rathe, who would subsequently lose her sight. They had a daughter, Emilie, and two sons, Theodor and Paul Heinrich.
Character birthday
Dylan and Dominic Warner, non identical twin sons of Firefox and Agnes Greenwood. Dominic inherited powers from his father, but Dylan took after his mother and had no powers at all. Dylan eventually distanced himself from his family, disgruntled at being the only one of his siblings and cousins without powers.
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