Edmund Schuster

Edmund Schuster (1851 to 1932) was a German engineer and mathematician, born in Munich in the Kingdom of Bavaria, who worked on special functions and complex analysis and is described as a pioneer of harmonic analysis. He studied in Bonn and Leipzig, and in 1875 he moved with his family to Chile, first to Santiago and then to Valdivia in the south of the country, where he lived until his death. In Valdivia he started a school of mathematics and in 1876 founded the Acta Philosophica Valdiviana. In harmonic analysis he is known for the Schuster function, whose roots are given by a closed formula involving the sine of two thirds of an arctangent and which is also used in physics. He also made contributions to civil engineering.