No label defined (Q4034810)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0748.00025.] While in Gymnasium (1802-1806) Lobachevskij's teachers were N. M. Ibragimov and G. I. Kortashevskij. In the spring of 1806 he was recommended to become a (Kazan' University) student and started attending lectures on Christmas 1807 (Julian calendar). In his second University year, his professor became Johann Martin Hristian Bartels (1769-1836) (Martin Fedorovich, in a russified version). A German mathematician Bartels, the teacher of Gauss, accepted an invitation from Kazan' University, while teaching in Switzerland, and became a professor of pure mathematics there in February 1808. He quickly equipped the library with the most important mathematical works of the time. Lobachevskij was the best mathematics student of exceptional talent. When he completed the university in 1811 he was denied the title because of a discipline problem, but under the influence of his (foreign) professors he obtained the title of Magister, and continued to work under Bartels to become a teaching adjunct professor in 1814. It had been hypothesised by a number of authors (F. Klein, A. V. Vasilev etc.) that Bartels had transmitted Gauss' ideas on non-Euclidean geometry to Lobachevskij. This hypothesis does not stand, for although Gauss wrote about this matter to a number of correspondents, his letters exchanged with Bartels show only the presence of personal family topics, with no trace of mathematics discussions. Nonetheless, the first impetus in Lobachevskij's treatment of the problem of parallels seems to had come from Bartels, who started the course on history of mathematics in 1810, using a French book by J. F. Montucla. The book mentions attempts by old and contemporary mathematicians to prove Euclid's fifth postulate. This must have challenged the self confident Lobachevskij who gave the first proof of the fifth postulate in this course of elementary mathematics in 1816/17. Copies of students' notes had been preserved and they show a subtle mistake in the proof. His manuscript ``Foundations of Geometry'' was discovered in 1819 at the University, but had not been saved. In 1822/23, in a survey of his lectures he states that the problem of parallelism has yet to be solved, a view repeated in a textbook for Gymnasium, to be published only in 1909 as it was first rejected. In 1824/25, there we are already signs that Lobachevskij had found the way to the heart of the fifth postulate. In 1825 Lobachevskij showed signs of a nervous breakdown, manifested in severe hostility towards some people he came across. Magnickij decided to have a special watch over him. This was an obvious sign of enormous pressure Lobachevskij was enduring while working on his great discovery. On September 30th he promised two mathematical papers by January 1st, 1826, for ``Scientific Papers'' of the University. This was not to be for the events of the end of 1825 (death of Alexander I, Dekabrists' uprising, the beginning of the rule of Nikolaj I...). On February 19th, 1826, Lobachevskij presents his work ``Exposition succinte...'' for publication in the University's ``Scientific Papers'' and on February 24th he gave a lecture on this paper, thus opening the era of the non- Euclidean geometry. It was published not later than 1829-30, in a revised form, under the title ``On foundations of geometry'' in ``Kazanski Vestnik''. It was the first publication on the new non-Euclidean geometry; it included both examples and their applications.