Hermann Grassmann

Hermann Günther Grassmann
Hermann Günther Grassmann
Born	(1809-04-15)15 April 1809 Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia (present-day Szczecin, Poland)
Died	26 September 1877(1877-09-26) (aged 68) Stettin, German Empire
Alma mater	University of Berlin
Known for	Bivector Color space Grassmannian Grassmann algebra Grassmann number Grassmann's law Grassmann's laws
Awards	PhD (Hon): University of Tübingen (1876)
Scientific career
Institutions	Stettin Gymnasium

Hermann Günther Grassmann (German: Graßmann, pronounced [ˈhɛɐman ˈɡʏntʰɐ ˈɡʁasman]; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was little noted until he was in his sixties. His work preceded and exceeded the concept which is now known as a vector space. He introduced the Grassmannian, the space which parameterizes all k-dimensional linear subspaces of an n-dimensional vector space V. In linguistics he helped free language history and structure from each other.