Jakob Steiner, (born March 18, 1796, Utzenstorf, Switzerland—died April 1, 1863, Bern),
Steiner surface [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]Swiss mathematician who was one of the founders of modern synthetic and projective geometry.
As the son of a small farmer, Steiner had no early schooling and did not learn to write until he was 14. Against the wishes of his parents, at 18 he entered the Pestalozzi School at Yverdon, Switzerland, where his extraordinary geometric intuition was discovered. Later he went to the University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin to study, supporting himself precariously as a tutor. By 1824 he had studied the geometric transformations that ... (100 of 440 words)