Johann Benedict Listing (25 July 1808 – 24 December 1882) was a German mathematician.
Johann Benedict Listing | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 25 July 1808 |
| Died | 24 December 1882 (aged 74) |
| Nationality | German |
| Alma mater | University of Göttingen |
| Known for | Back-and-forth method Listing number Listing's knot Listing's law |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Doctoral advisor | Carl Friedrich Gauss |
| Doctoral students | Edward Leamington Nichols |
J. B. Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. He finished his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1834, and in 1839 he succeeded Wilhelm Weber as professor of physics.
Listing first introduced the term "topology" to replace the older term "geometria situs" (also called sometimes "Analysis situs"), in a famous article published in 1847, although he had used the term in correspondence some years earlier.[1] He (independently) discovered the properties of the Möbius strip, or half-twisted strip, at the same time (1858) as August Ferdinand Möbius, and went further in exploring the properties of strips with higher-order twists (paradromic rings). He discovered topological invariants which came to be called Listing numbers.[2]
In ophthalmology, Listing's law describes an essential element of extraocular eye muscle coordination.
In geodesy, he coined in 1872 the term geoid for the idealized geometric surface of the figure of the Earth.[3]
References
External links
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Johann Benedict Listing", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- A reprint of (part of) his famous 1847 article introducing Topology, published in Vorstudien zur Topologie, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp. 67, 1848.