Alfred Clebsch

Who was Alfred Clebsch?

Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch was a German mathematician who made important contributions to algebraic geometry and invariant theory. He attended the University of Königsberg and was habilitated at Berlin. He subsequently taught in Berlin and Karlsruhe. His collaboration with Paul Gordan in Giessen led to the introduction of Clebsch–Gordan coefficients for spherical harmonics, which are now widely used in quantum mechanics.

Together with Carl Neumann at Göttingen, he founded the mathematical research journal Mathematische Annalen in 1868.

In 1883 Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant translated Clebsch's work on elasticity into French and published it as Théorie de l'élasticité des Corps Solides.