Hermann Grassmann

Hermann Günther Grassmann (April 15, 1809 – September 26, 1877) was a German mathematician, physicist, linguist, scholar, and neohumanist.

Works on mathematics

Theory of extensive magnitudes

Following an idea of his father, as Grassmann himself quotes in the A1, he invented a new type of product, the exterior product which he calls also combinatorial product (In German: äußeres Produkt or kombinatorisches Produkt). Since his aim in the A1 was to provide a new foundation of all of mathematics, he started with philosophical and quite general definitions. For more details, see the historical section at exterior power.

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