Weber, Heinrich (1842–1913)

German mathematician whose chief work was in the fields of algebra and number theory. He demonstrated Norwegian mathematician Niels Abel's theorem in its most general form.

Weber was born and educated in Heidelberg, where he became professor in 1869. He then taught at a number of institutions in Germany and Switzerland.

Weber proved German mathematician Leopold Kronecker's theorem that the absolute Abelian fields are cyclotomic; that is, that they are derived from the rational numbers by the adjunction of roots of unity.

Weber's work in such subjects as heat, electricity, and electrolytic dissociation was contained in his Die partiellen Differentialgleichungen der mathematischen Physik (1900–01), which was essentially a reworking of, and a commentary upon, a book of the same title based on lectures given by Bernhard Riemann and written by Karl Hattendorff.

Weber's Lehrbuch der Algebra (1896) became a standard text.