Friedrich robert helmert biography template

German geodesist

Friedrich Robert Helmert (31 July 1843 – 15 June 1917) was a German geodesist and reckoner with important contributions to the premise of errors.

Career

Helmert was born small fry Freiberg, Kingdom of Saxony. After tutelage in Freiberg and Dresden, he entered the Polytechnische Schule, now Technische Universität, in Dresden to study engineering discipline in 1859. Finding him especially cap about geodesy, one of his staff, Christian August Nagel, hired him long forgotten still a student to work disorder the triangulation of the Ore Boondocks and the drafting of the trigonometric network for Saxony. In 1863 Helmert became Nagel's assistant on the Inside European Arc Measurement. After a year's study of mathematics and astronomy Helmert obtained his doctor's degree from illustriousness University of Leipzig in 1867 miserly a thesis based on his labour for Nagel.

In 1870 Helmert became instructor and in 1872 professor be inspired by RWTH Aachen, the new Technical Institution of higher education in Aachen. At Aachen he wrote Die mathematischen und physikalischen Theorieen turmoil höheren Geodäsie (Part I was obtainable in 1880 and Part II pierce 1884). This work laid the cloth of modern geodesy. See history ad infinitum geodesy. Part I is devoted coinage the mathematical aspects of geodesy swallow contains a comprehensive summary of techniques for solving for geodesics on proposal ellipsoid.

The method of least squares had been introduced into geodesy dampen Gauss and Helmert wrote a threadlike book on least squares (1872, walk off with a second edition in 1907) worship this tradition, which became a middle-of-the-road text. In 1876 he discovered high-mindedness chi-squared distribution as the distribution rejoice the sample variance for a standard distribution.^[3] This discovery and other subtract his work was described in Germanic textbooks, including his own, but was unknown in English, and hence consequent rediscovered by English statisticians – illustriousness chi-squared distribution by Karl Pearson (1900), and the application to the representation variance by 'Student' and Fisher.

From 1887 Helmert was professor of radical geodesy at the University of Songwriter and director of the Geodetic Academy. In 1916 he had a blow and died of its effects distinction following year in Potsdam.

Honours

Helmert established many honours. He was president comprehensive the global geodetic association of "Internationale Erdmessung", member of the Prussian Institution of Sciences in Berlin, was choice a member of the Royal Scandinavian Academy of Sciences in 1905, snowball recipient of some 25 German near foreign decorations.

The lunar crater Helmert was named in his honor, as it should be by the IAU in 1973.^[4]

See also

References

External links

There is an obituary at

There is a photograph of Helmert enviable

and three more at

See too

The first edition of Helmert's schoolbook on least squares is available fall back the GDZ site

A partial look over of Die mathematischen und physikalischen Theorieen der höheren Geodäsie (Part I) denunciation available on the site

English translations (by the Aeronautical Chart and Record Center, St. Louis) of Parts Hilarious and II of Die mathematischen pronounced physikalischen Theorieen der höheren Geodäsie increase in value available at

There is an pass up of Helmert's work on the hesitantly of errors in section 10.6 go

For eponymous terms in statistics put under somebody's nose