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Sundman, Karl Frithiof

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Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers

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BornKaskinen, Finland, 25 October 1873

DiedHelsinki, Finland, 28 September 1949

Karl Sundman is most widely remembered for his analytic solution to the so-called three-body problem and for his design of an analog computer, which was planned to perform the power series calculations needed for modeling planetary perturbations. He was the son of custom-house officer Johan Frithiof Sundman and Adolfina Fredrika Rosenqvist. His parents attempted to train him as a fisherman, but the boy was interested in academic learning and prepared privately for admission to the Imperial Alexander University at Helsinki. There, he studied mathematics and physical sciences (1893–1897) and also assisted in the bureau for stellar photography at the local astronomical observatory. From 1897 to 1899, Sundman studied at the Pulkovo Observatory, where he examined the orbital motions of the minor planets. His doctoral dissertation (1901) addressed the perturbations of minor planets having a mean motion twice that...

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Selected References

  • Barrow-Green, June (1997). Poincaré and the Three Body Problem. Providence, Rhode Island: American Mathematical Society and London Mathematical Society.

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  • Järnefelt, Gustav (1950). “Karl F. Sundman In Memoriam.” Acta Mathematica 83, nos. 3–4: i–vi.

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  • Lehti, Raimo (2001). “Karl Frithiof Sundman, forskare i himmelsmekanik, I-II.” Normat: Nordisk matematisk tidskrift 49: 7–20, 71–88.

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  • Schalén, C. (1976). “Sundman, Karl Frithiof.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 13, pp. 153–154. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Helsinki University of Technology, Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm, Sweden

    Raimo Lehti

Authors
  1. Raimo Lehti
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Science, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

    Thomas Hockey

  2. University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences, Irvine, CA, USA

    Virginia Trimble

  3. Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Thomas R. Williams

  4. Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, USA

    Katherine Bracher

  5. York Univesity, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Richard A. Jarrell

  6. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Jordan D. Marché II

  7. University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    JoAnn Palmeri

  8. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniel W. E. Green

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Lehti, R. (2014). Sundman, Karl Frithiof. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1348

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