Abstract
A week after Dirichlet’s death, the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin published a letter Dirichlet had written to his former students in Berlin three years earlier to thank them for the silver flagon that they had sent him for his first Christmas in Göttingen. As the editors of the paper noted, it had not been publicized before. It is perhaps the longest and most revealing letter that Dirichlet ever wrote about the role of the teacher vis-a-vis his students.
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- 1.
Vossische Zeitung, 12 Mai 1859.
- 2.
A detailed list of the courses announced by Dirichlet in Berlin and Göttingen, with titles and dates, appears in Biermann 1959a:33–39 and 73–74. For the courses taught in Berlin, this list also includes the number of students enrolled in each.
- 3.
Arendt’s publications are signed G. Arendt; his first name is given as Gustav by Dirichlet in a document quoted in Biermann 1988:51, and as Georg elsewhere.
- 4.
See the prefaces to Dirichlet–Dedekind 1863 and Dirichlet–Dedekind 1871. Dedekind explained his procedure not only in the prefaces to all four editions but also in the Göttingische Gelehrten Anzeigen of January 1864 and September 1871.
- 5.
Scharlau, ed. 1981, esp. pp. 49–53.
- 6.
Riemann–Hattendorff 1882:v–vii.
- 7.
A survey of these publications, emphasizing the Frank-Von Mises editions, is found in Siegmund-Schultze 2007. Also see the bibliography at the end of this volume.
- 8.
See Sect. 13.2.
- 9.
Dirichlet–Dedekind 1894:602–3.
- 10.
For further interesting details see Jungnickel and McCormmach 1986, esp. pp. 197–98.
- 11.
Grube stated that his editions were based on notes he took while attending Dirichlet’s course in the winter 1856/57; however, the list of courses reproduced in Biermann 1959a and based on the university’s official records, as well as the introductory remarks in Dirichlet–Meyer 1871, indicates that, aside from a course in the summer of 1857, the relevant course was given in the winter of 1857/58.
- 12.
Elstrodt 2007:27 and Elstrodt-Ulrich 1999.
- 13.
See Chapter 14 for his statement.
- 14.
See, for example, 1841a, reproduced in Werke 1:393, and a quote by Arendt, according to which Dirichlet concluded his 1854 lecture on integrals by stating that “es liesse sich noch manches über dieses Attractionsproblem und über verwandte nach demselben Prinzip des diskontinuirlichen Faktors zu behandelten Aufgaben beibringen, was uns aber die bis ans Ziel vorgerückte Zeit nicht mehr verstattet.” (Dirichlet–Arendt 1904:394).
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Merzbach, U.C. (2018). Lectures. In: Dirichlet. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01073-7_16
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