Karl Georg Christian von Staudt

Who was Karl Georg Christian von Staudt?

Karl Georg Christian von Staudt was a German mathematician born in the Free Imperial City of Rothenburg, which is now called Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. From 1814 he studied in Gymnasium in Ausbach. He attended the University of Göttingen from 1818 to 1822 where he studied with Gauss who was director of the observatory. Staudt provided an ephemeris for the orbits of Mars and the asteroid Pallas. When in 1821 Comet Nicollet-Pons was observed, he provided the elements of its orbit. These accomplishments in astronomy earned him his doctorate from University of Erlangen in 1822.

Staudt's professional career began as a secondary school instructor in Würzburg until 1827 and then Nuremberg until 1835. He married Jeanette Dreschler in 1832. They had a son Eduard and daughter Mathilda, but Jeanette died in 1848.

The book Geometrie der Lage was a landmark in projective geometry. As Burau wrote:

Furthermore, this book uses the complete quadrangle to "construct the fourth harmonic associated with three points on a straight line", the projective harmonic conjugate.

Hans Freudenthal has provided this picture of von Staudt's contribution to the foundations of projective geometry: