STEINER, Jakob (1796—1863), one of the greatest geometricians of all ages, was born on the 18th of March 1796 at the Swiss village of Utzendorf (canton Bern). Here he grew up helping his father in his agricultural pursuits, learning to write only at the age of fourteen. At eighteen he became a pupil of Pestalozzi, and afterwards studied at Heidelberg. Thence he went to Berlin, earning a livelihood here as in Heidelberg by giving private lessons. Here he became acquainted with Crelle, who, encouraged by his ability and by that of Abel, then also staying at Berlin, founded his famous Journal (1826). After Steiner’s publication (1832) of his Systematische Entwickelungen he got, through Jacobi’s exertions, who was then professor at Königsberg, an honorary degree of that university; and through the influence of Jacobi and of the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt a new chair of geometry was founded for him at Berlin (1834). This he occupied till his death, which took place in Bern on April 1, 1863, after years of bad health.
Steiner’s mathematical work was confined to geometry. This he treated synthetically, to the total exclusion of analysis, which he hated, and he is said to have considered it a disgrace to synthetical geometry if equal or higher results were obtained by analytical methods. In his own field he surpassed all his contemporaries. His investigations are distinguished by their great generality, by the fertility of his resources, and by a rigour in his proofs which rivals that of the ancients, so that he has been considered the greatest geometrical genius since the time of Apollonius....
In his Systematische Entwickelung der Abhängigkeit geometrischer Gestalten von einander he laid the foundation on which synthetic geometry in its present form rests. He introduces what are now called the geometrical forms (the row, flat pencil, &c.), and establishes between their elements a one-one correspondence, or, as he calls it, makes them projective. He next gives by aid of these projective rows and pencils a new generation of conics and ruled quadric surfaces, “which leads quicker and more directly than former methods into the inner nature of conics and reveals to us the organic connexion of their innumerable properties and mysteries. In this work also, of which unfortunately only one volume appeared instead of the projected five, we see for the first time the principle of duality introduced from the very beginning as an immediate outflow of the most fundamental properties of the plane, the line, and the point, so that a proof of its correctness is not required.
In a second little volume, Die geometrischen Constructionen ausgeführt mittelst der geraden Linie und eines festen Kreises (1833), he shows, what had been already suggested by Poncelet, how all problems of the second order can be solved by aid of the straight-edge alone without the use of compasses, as soon as one circle is given on the drawing paper.
The rest of Steiner’s writings are found in numerous papers mostly published in Crelle's Journal, the first volume of which contains his first four papers. The most important are those relating to algebraical curves and surfaces, especially the short paper Allgemeine Eigenschaften algebraischer Curvem This contains only results, and there is no indication of the method by which they were obtained, so that, according to Hesse, “they are, like Fermat’s theorems, riddles to the present and future generations.” Eminent analysts succeeded in proving some of the theorems, but it was reserved to Cremona to prove them all, and that by a uniform synthetic method, in his book on algebraical curves. Other important investigations relate to maxima and minima. Starting from simple elementary propositions, Steiner advances to the solution of problems which analytically require the calculus of variation, but which at the time altogether surpassed the powers of that calculus. Connected with this is the paper Vom Krümmingsschwerpuncte ebener Curven, which contains numerous properties of pedals and roulettes, especially of their areas.
Steiner’s papers have been collected and published in two volumes by the Berlin Academy. His lectures on synthetic geometry, containing the theory of conics, have been published since his death, edited by Geiser and Schröter. Biographical notices are contained in Geiser’s pamphlet Zur Erinnerung an J. Steiner (Schaffhausen, 1874).
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