Johann Faulhaber (5 May 1580 – 10 September 1635) was a German mathematician.

Born in Ulm, Faulhaber was a trained weaver who later took the role of a surveyor of the city of Ulm. He collaborated with Johannes Kepler and Ludolph van Ceulen. Besides his work on the fortifications of cities (notably Basel and Frankfurt), Faulhaber built water wheels in his home town and geometrical instruments for the military. Faulhaber made the first publication of Henry Briggs's Logarithm in Germany. He is also credited with the first printed solution of equal temperament.[1] He died in Ulm.

Faulhaber's major contribution was in calculating the sums of powers of integers. Jacob Bernoulli makes references to Faulhaber in his Ars Conjectandi.

Works

• Neue geometrische und perspektivische Inventiones etlicher sonderbahrer Instrument (in Latin). Frankfurt am Main: Johann Bringer. 1610.

See also

• Faulhaber's formula

References

• Faulhaber, Johannes (1631). Academia Algebrae, darinnen die miraculosische Inventiones, zu den höchsten Cossen weiters continuirt und profitiert werden. Ulm. SLUB Dresden
• Knuth, D. E. (1993), "Johann Faulhaber and the Sums of Powers", Mathematics of Computation, American Mathematical Society, 61 (203): 277–294, arXiv:math/9207222, doi:10.2307/2152953, JSTOR 2152953
• Smith, David Eugene (1959), A Source Book in Mathematics, Mineola, NY: Dover, pp. 85–90
• Schneider, Ivo (1993), Johannes Faulhaber: 1580–1635. Rechenmeister in einer Welt des Umbruchs, Basiliae: Birkhäuser, ISBN 3-7643-2919-X
  1. Date,name,ratio,cents: from equal temperament monochord tables p55-p78; J. Murray Barbour Tuning and Temperament, Michigan State University Press 1951

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Johann Faulhaber.

• Johann Faulhaber in VD17
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Johann Faulhaber", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews