Jump to content
 







Main menu
   


Navigation  



Main page
Contents
Current events
Random article
About Wikipedia
Contact us
Donate
 




Contribute  



Help
Learn to edit
Community portal
Recent changes
Upload file
 








Search  

































Create account

Log in
 









Create account
 Log in
 




Pages for logged out editors learn more  



Contributions
Talk
 



















Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Life  



1.1  Family  





1.2  Works  







2 Name  





3 Honours & Monuments  



3.1  Annaberg  





3.2  Staffelstein  





3.3  Erfurt  







4 Postage Stamps  





5 References  





6 External links  














Adam Ries






العربية
Arpetan
Azərbaycanca
Català
Čeština
Deutsch
Eesti
Español
Esperanto
Français
Italiano
Kreyòl ayisyen
مصرى

Norsk bokmål
Polski
Português
Română
Русский
Simple English
Українська
 

Edit links
 









Article
Talk
 

















Read
Edit
View history
 








Tools
   


Actions  



Read
Edit
View history
 




General  



What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Get shortened URL
Download QR code
Wikidata item
 




Print/export  



Download as PDF
Printable version
 




In other projects  



Wikimedia Commons
 
















Appearance
   

 






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 


Adam Ries
Adam Ries in his 58th year of age, his only contemporary portrait
Born17 January 1492
Died30 March 1559 (1559-03-31) (aged 67)
NationalityGerman
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics

Adam Ries (17 January 1492 – 30 March 1559) was a German mathematician. He is also known by the name Adam Riese.[1] He is known as the "father of modern calculating" because of his decisive contribution to the recognition that Roman numerals are unpractical and to their replacement by the considerably more practical Arabic numerals.[2]

Life

[edit]

Almost nothing is known about Ries' childhood, youth and education. The exact year of his birth is not known. The caption on the only known contemporary portrait of the mathematician reads: ANNO 1550 ADAM RIES SEINS ALTERS IM LVIII. So apparently he was in his 58th year of age at the time of the picture, which was made in 1550. From this it can be deduced that he was born in 1492 or 1493.

The location of his birth, Staffelstein, can be determined with certainty, since he gives information about himself in the preface to his book, Coß. His father was the owner of the mill there, Contz Ries, and his mother, Eva Kittler, was his father's second wife.

The first decades after Ries' birth are not documented, so it is not known which schools he attended. There is also no information about his studies in the matriculation registers of the universities.

The first time that Adam Ries was mentioned in a document was on 22 April 1517, when he appeared before the Council of Staffelstein because of a dispute over an inheritance. By 1509, he was already living in Zwickau with his younger brother, Conrad, who attended the Latin school there. In 1518, Ries went to Erfurt, where he ran a mathematics school, and he wrote two of his mathematics books and had them published there.

In 1522 or 1523, he moved to the newly founded mining townofAnnaberg where he spent the rest of his life. There he finished work on the manuscript of his algebra textbook, Coß, in 1524, although the book was not published until 1992 by B.G. Teubner. During this time, Ries became acquainted with Anna Leuber, the daughter of Freiberg master fitter, Andreas Leuber. The wedding of the couple was mentioned in the register of the St. Anne's Church in Annaberg in 1525. In the same year, he took the oath of citizenship, purchased a house in Johannisgasse in Annaberg and settled down. He first earned his living as a Rezessschreiber (a person who checked the calculations of the mines), and later as a Gegenschreiber (a bookkeeper of the mines) and Zehntner (regional financial administrator). In 1539, he bought "Riesenburg", a small castle outside of the town, whose buildings still bear his name today. After his last work appeared in print in 1550, Ries died on 30 March 1559. Because of scanty information, it is not known where he is buried, whether in Annaberg, the Riesenburg or elsewhere.

Family

[edit]
Rechnung auff der linihen
Rechnung auff der linihen und federn
Arithmetic book, 1574
Adam Ries monument at the St. Trinitatiskirche in Annaberg-Buchholz
Bust in Erfurt

Ries and his wife had at least eight children. Three of the five sons, Adam, Abraham, and Jacob, were all active as mathematicians in Annaberg at times. While Abraham and Jacob died in their home town in 1604, Adam is supposed to have settled in the Harz mountains. The fourth son, Isaac, moved to Leipzig, where he was active as a Visierer (a master of weights and measures). Paul, the fifth son, was a landowner and judge in Wiesa. The three daughters, Eva, Anna and Sybilla, all married in Annaberg.

Adam Ries' descendants are the subject of constant, detailed genealogical research. Great numbers of his descendants still live in the upper Ore Mountains today. The Adam-Ries-Bund (Adam Ries Association, see external links) has taken on the task of researching all of the descendants of Adam Ries and, to date, has more than 20,000 direct descendants in its continually updated database.

Works

[edit]

Ries did not write his works in Latin, as was usual at that time, but in German.[4]

Name

[edit]

Since the spelling of names was not as fixed at that time as it is today, the contemporary spellings "Ris, "Rise", "Ryse" and even『Reyeß』are also sometimes found.

In today's usage, both variants of his name, "Ries" and "Riese", can be found. The latter is usual in the German expression "nach Adam Riese" which means "according to Adam Ries" and it is used when speaking about simple arithmetic, e.g. zwei und zwei macht, nach Adam Riese, vier (two plus two is, according to Adam Ries, four). Furthermore, the German word "Riese" can be translated as "giant" in English, thus inspiring a common tongue-in-cheek adaptation of the beforementioned saying, "nach Adam Riese und Eva Zwerg" ("according to Adam Giant and Eve Dwarf).

Honours & Monuments

[edit]

The Nysa family main-belt asteroid 7655 Adamries was named after him in 1997.

Annaberg

[edit]

On the occasion of the 400th birthday of Adam Ries, the Annaberg Historical Society decided in 1891 to put up a monument to the mathematician. The sculpture by the Dresden sculptor, Henze, was not dedicated until 5 November 1893 because of financial difficulties. In 1943, the bronze bust was melted to make armaments and it was replaced ten years later by a sandstone copy. At the end of the 1970s, this was completely removed from the town because of fears that its condition would continue to deteriorate due to the material. In 1991, a new sandstone bust was exhibited in its current position. After severe damage by vandalism in 1992, it was once again reconstructed through the initiative of the Adam Ries Association, and it was once again placed before the church on the 100th anniversary of the first dedication.

Staffelstein

[edit]

Erfurt

[edit]

Postage Stamps

[edit]

References

[edit]
  • ^ Christiane Brodersen; Kai Brodersen (2018), Adam Ries: Das erste Rechenbuch (Erfurt 1525), Kartoffeldruck Spewer, ISBN 9783939526384
  • ^ M. A. Clements; Alan Bishop; Christine Keitel-Kreidt; Jeremy Kilpatrick; Frederick Koon-Shing Leung (2012), Third International Handbook of Mathematics Education, Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol. 27, Spri nger, p. 14, ISBN 9781461446842.
  • [edit]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adam_Ries&oldid=1222884989"

    Categories: 
    1492 births
    1559 deaths
    People from Bad Staffelstein
    16th-century German mathematicians
    16th-century German writers
    16th-century German male writers
    Hidden categories: 
    Articles with hCards
    Articles with German-language sources (de)
    All articles with dead external links
    Articles with dead external links from October 2016
    Articles with permanently dead external links
    Commons category link is on Wikidata
    Articles with FAST identifiers
    Articles with ISNI identifiers
    Articles with VIAF identifiers
    Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
    Articles with BNF identifiers
    Articles with BNFdata identifiers
    Articles with GND identifiers
    Articles with J9U identifiers
    Articles with KBR identifiers
    Articles with LCCN identifiers
    Articles with NKC identifiers
    Articles with NTA identifiers
    Articles with PLWABN identifiers
    Articles with VcBA identifiers
    Articles with MATHSN identifiers
    Articles with ZBMATH identifiers
    Articles with DTBIO identifiers
    Articles with RISM identifiers
    Articles with SUDOC identifiers
     



    This page was last edited on 8 May 2024, at 14:47 (UTC).

    Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.



    Privacy policy

    About Wikipedia

    Disclaimers

    Contact Wikipedia

    Code of Conduct

    Developers

    Statistics

    Cookie statement

    Mobile view



    Wikimedia Foundation
    Powered by MediaWiki