Dear All
Before we get into nationality bashing reading the following article
may be useful.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/HistTopics/Matrices_and_determinants.html
After a quick glance my opinion is that the development was
international and earlier than suggested below.
Unfortunately the development of terminology is not covered in
detail so I can not say exactly when eigenvector & eigenvalue were
coined.
For those who are interested in the History of Maths a more
thorough exploration of the site from:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/
may be interesting.
Jean
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date sent: 20 Jan 2001 20:33:47 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Herman Rubin)
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Subject: Re: AW: eigenvalue: origin of term
> In article
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >, Werner Wittmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> >Karl,
> >yes it is as German as your name.Value means "Wert" and eigenvalue
> >means "Eigenwert" and I guess it goes back to Carl Friedrich Gauss
> >who provided us with many math concepts,i.e. matrix algebra among
> >many others.
>
> Gauss is responsible for lots of things in mathematics and
> statistics, but NOT for the "Gaussian distribution" and NOT
> for the term "eigenvalue".
>
> The term is originally English as "characteristic value",
> and while the concept certainly goes back at least to Euler
> (principle axes of an ellipsoid and principle directions of
> the inertia matrix), the term came from the British
> algebraists in the second half of the 19th century. The
> physicists and engineers did not read the algebra books in
> English, and copied "eigen" when translating it back.
> --
> This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
> are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman
> Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX:
> (765)494-0558
>
>
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Jean M. Russell M.A. M.Sc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Corporate Information & Computing Services,
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