Ludwig Schläfli

Ludwig Schläfli (1814 to 1895) was a Swiss mathematician whose work lay in geometry, arithmetic and function theory. Born in Grasswil, he studied theology at Bern, graduated in 1836, and spent ten years as a school teacher in Thun while studying advanced mathematics in his spare time. In 1843 he met Jakob Steiner at Bern and the two corresponded until 1856. He became a Privatdozent at the University of Bern in 1848, an extraordinary professor in 1853 and an ordinary professor of mathematics in 1868. Between 1850 and 1852 he wrote his masterpiece, Theorie der vielfachen Kontinuität, a geometry of n dimensions in which he introduced polytopes and the notation now called the Schläfli symbol, used to classify regular polyhedra and their higher dimensional analogues. He received the Steiner Prize of the Berlin Academy in 1870 for his discovery of the 27 lines and the 36 double six on the general cubic surface.