Ferdinand Georg Frobenius

Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
Born(1849-10-26)26 October 1849
Died3 August 1917(1917-08-03) (aged 67)
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
NationalityGerman
Alma materUniversity of Göttingen
University of Berlin
Known forDifferential equations
Group theory
Cayley–Hamilton theorem
Frobenius method
Frobenius matrix
Frobenius inner product
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Berlin
ETH Zurich
Doctoral advisorKarl Weierstrass
Ernst Kummer
Doctoral studentsRichard Fuchs
Edmund Landau
Issai Schur
Konrad Knopp
Walter Schnee

Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (26 October 1849 – 3 August 1917) was a German mathematician, best known for his contributions to the theory of elliptic functions, differential equations, number theory, and to group theory. He is known for the famous determinantal identities, known as Frobenius–Stickelberger formulae, governing elliptic functions, and for developing the theory of biquadratic forms. He was also the first to introduce the notion of rational approximations of functions (nowadays known as Padé approximants), and gave the first full proof for the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. He also lent his name to certain differential-geometric objects in modern mathematical physics, known as Frobenius manifolds.