Elwin Bruno Christoffel (November 10, 1829 in Montjoie, now called Monschau

Monschau

Monschau is a small resort town in the Eifel region of western Germany, located in the district Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia.-Geography:The town is located in the hills of the North Eifel, within the Hohes Venn – Eifel Nature Park in the narrow valley of the Rur river.The historic town center...

 – March 15, 1900 in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

.

Life

Christoffel attended the Jesuit Gymnasium and Friedrich-Wilhelms Gymnasium in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

 and studied at the University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

with Dirichlet

Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet

Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was a German mathematician with deep contributions to number theory , as well as to the theory of Fourier series and other topics in mathematical analysis; he is credited with being one of the first mathematicians to give the modern formal definition of a...

, among others, where he received a doctorate in 1856
for a thesis on the motion of electricity in homogeous bodies. In 1859, Christoffel
became a Privatdozent

Privatdozent

Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

 at the University of Berlin.
In 1862 he was appointed to a chair at the Polytechnic School

ETH Zurich

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....

 in
Zurich left vacant by Dedekind

Richard Dedekind

Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind was a German mathematician who did important work in abstract algebra , algebraic number theory and the foundations of the real numbers.-Life:...

. After moving to the Gewerbeakademie in
Berlin (now part of the Technical University of Berlin

Technical University of Berlin

The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...

)
in 1869, Christoffel became a professor at the University of Strasbourg

University of Strasbourg

The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....

 in
1872, where he remained until retiring in 1894.

Work

Christoffel worked on conformal map

Conformal map

In mathematics, a conformal map is a function which preserves angles. In the most common case the function is between domains in the complex plane.More formally, a map,...

s, potential theory

Potential theory

In mathematics and mathematical physics, potential theory may be defined as the study of harmonic functions.- Definition and comments :The term "potential theory" was coined in 19th-century physics, when it was realized that the fundamental forces of nature could be modeled using potentials which...

,
invariant theory

Invariant theory

Invariant theory is a branch of abstract algebra dealing with actions of groups on algebraic varieties from the point of view of their effect on functions...

, tensor analysis,
mathematical physics

Mathematical physics

Mathematical physics refers to development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines this area as: "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and...

, geodesy

Geodesy

Geodesy , also named geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space. Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal...

, and shock waves

Shock Waves

Shock Waves, , is a 1977 horror movie written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn...

.
The Christoffel symbol, Riemann–Christoffel tensor

Riemann curvature tensor

In the mathematical field of differential geometry, the Riemann curvature tensor, or Riemann–Christoffel tensor after Bernhard Riemann and Elwin Bruno Christoffel, is the most standard way to express curvature of Riemannian manifolds...

, Christoffel–Darboux formula

Christoffel–Darboux formula

In mathematics, the Christoffel–Darboux theorem is an identity for a sequence of orthogonal polynomials, introduced by and . It states thatwhere f_j is the jth term of a set of orthogonal polynomials of norm hj and leading coefficient kj....

, and Schwarz–Christoffel mapping are named after him.