[David Hilbert] / Rudolf Albert Theodor Schimmack - Höhere Differentialgleichungen - 1903

!!!Extreme rarity!!!

Recorded and signed the lectures Rudolf Albert Theodor Schimmack

Title: "Higher Differential Equations: II"
Event: 4-hour lecture
Lecturer: Prof. Hilbert
Semester: Winter semester 1903/1904
Student:
Rudolf Albert Theodor Schimmack cand.mathematik later Dr. phil. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen 1908

"A balanced understanding of Hilbert’s mathematical world cannot be achieved
without paying close attention to his teaching, first at Königsberg and especially at Göttingen beginning in 1895. Hilbert directed no less than sixty-eight doctoral dissertations,
sixty of them in the relatively short period between 1898 and 1914. As is well-known, at
the mathematical institute created in Göttingen by Felix Klein, Hilbert became the leader
of a unique scientific center that brought together a gallery of world-class researchers in
mathematics and physics.8
It is hard to exaggerate the influence of Hilbert’s thinking and
personality on all that came out of the institute under his direction. Fortunately, we can document with great accuracy the contents of Hilbert’s Göttingen lectures, which interestingly illuminate the evolution of his ideas on many issues. These lectures were far from
being organized presentations of well-known results and established theories. Rather, he
used his lectures to explore new ideas and to think aloud about the issues that currently
occupied him. Following a tradition initiated by Klein in Göttingen, Hilbert’s lecture notes
were made available to all students who wished to consult them at the Lesezimmer, the
heart of the mathematical institute. At least since 1902, in every course he taught, Hilbert
chose a student to take notes during the lectures. The student was expected to write up
these notes coherently, whereupon Hilbert would go through them, adding his own corrections and remarks.9
Today the collection of these notes offers an invaluable source for the these notes coherently, whereupon Hilbert would go through them, adding his own corrections and remarks.9
Today the collection of these notes offers an invaluable source for the
historian interested in understanding Hilbert’s thought.
Late in life Hilbert vividly recalled that these lectures provided important occasions for the free exploration of untried ideas. He thus said:
The closest conceivable connection between research and teaching became a decisive feature of
my mathematical activity. The interchange of scientific ideas, the communication of what one
found by himself and the elaboration of what one had heard, was from my early years at Königsberg a pivotal aspect of my scientific work ... In my lectures, and above all in the seminars, my
guiding principle was not to present material in a standard and as smooth as possible way, just to
help the student keeping clean and ordered notebooks. Above all, I always tried to illuminate the
8. Accounts of Göttingen as the world leading center of mathematics, and the roles of Klein and
Hilbert in fostering this centrality appear in Reid 1970; Rowe 1989; Parshall & Rowe 1994, 150-
154.
9. See Born 1978, 81-85, for a retrospective account of Born’s own experience as Hilbert’s student.