Rehuel Lobatto

Rehuel Lobatto (June 6, 1797 – February 9, 1866 [1] ) was a Dutch mathematician. The Gauss-Lobatto quadrature method is named after him, as are his variants on the Runge–Kutta methods for solving ODEs, and the Lobatto polynomials. [2] He was the author of a great number of articles in scientific periodicals, as well as various schoolbooks.

Rehuel Lobatto
Plaque in Delft

Lobatto was born in Amsterdam to a Portuguese Jewish family. As a schoolboy Lobatto already displayed remarkable talent for mathematics. [1] He studied mathematics under Jean Henri van Swinden at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, earning his BA in 1812; [3] and then with Adolphe Quetelet (coediting a volume of "Correspondance Mathématique et Physique").

Working for the Dutch government - initially for the Ministry of the Interior - he became secretary of a statistical commission in 1831.[4] From 1826 till 1849 he was editor of the official annual of statistics. In 1841 he was appointed by Minister Rochussen as a member of a commission for the conversion of the public debt. In 1842 he became a Professor [5] of Higher Mathematics [6] at the Polytechnical School of Delft, remaining there until his final years.

In 1836 he became member of the Royal Institute, predecessor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[6] The Order of the Netherlands Lion was conferred upon him; he received his Doctoral degree "honoris causa" from Groningen University. [1]

References
  1. Gotthard Deutsch, E. Slijper (1906). "LOBATTO, REHUEL", The Jewish Encyclopedia.
  2. See: John Burkardt (ND). "Lobatto polynomial". Florida State University
  3. Rehuel Lobatto at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Butter, Irene Hasenberg (1970-07-31). Academic economics in Holland 1800–1870. Springer. ISBN 90-247-0518-5.
  5. A "Hoogleraar"; see that article for discussion.
  6. "Rehuel Lobatto (1797 - 1866)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 30 March 2022.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.