Hermann Grassmann

Hermann Günther Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann
Born(1809-04-15)15 April 1809
Died26 September 1877(1877-09-26) (aged 68)
Stettin, German Empire
Alma materUniversity of Berlin
Known for
AwardsPhD (Hon):
University of Tübingen (1876)
Scientific career
InstitutionsStettin Gymnasium
1878 copy of Grassmann's "Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre"
1878 copy of Grassmann's "Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre"
First page of "Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre"
First page of "Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre"

Hermann Günther Grassmann (German: Graßmann, pronounced [ˈhɛɐman ˈɡʏntʰɐ ˈɡʁasman]; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was little noted until he was in his sixties. His work preceded and exceeded the concept which is now known as a vector space. He introduced the Grassmannian, the space which parameterizes all k-dimensional linear subspaces of an n-dimensional vector space V. In linguistics he helped free language history and structure from each other.