Weierstrass and Approximation Theory

We discuss and examine Weierstrass’ main contributions to approximation theory. §1. Weierstrass This is a story about Karl Wilhelm Theodor Weierstrass (Weierstraß), what he contributed to approximation theory (and why), and some of the consequences thereof. We start this story by relating a little about the man and his life. Karl Wilhelm Theodor Weierstrass was born on October 31, 1815 at Ostenfelde near Münster into a liberal (in the political sense) Catholic family. He was the eldest of four children, none of whom married. Weierstrass was a very successful gymnasium student and was subsequently sent by his father to the University of Bonn to study commerce and law. His father seems to have had in mind a government post for his son. However neither commerce nor law was to his liking, and he “wasted” four years there, not graduating. Beer and fencing seem to have been fairly high on his priority list at the time. The young Weierstrass returned home, and after a period of “rest”, was sent to the Academy at Münster where he obtained a teacher’s certificate. At the Academy he fortuitously came under the tutelage and personal guidance of C. Gudermann who was professor of mathematics at Münster and whose basic mathematical love and interest was the subject of elliptic functions and power series. This interest he was successful in conveying to Weierstrass. In 1841 Weierstrass received his teacher’s certificate, and then spent the next 13 years as a teacher (for 6 years he was a teacher in a pregymnasium in the town of Deutsch-Krone (West Prussia), then for another 7 years in a gymnasium in Braunsberg (East Prussia)). During this period he continued learning mathematics, mainly by studying the work of Abel. He also published some mathematical papers. However these appeared in school journals and were quite naturally not discovered at that time by any who could understand or appreciate them. (Weierstrass’ collected works contain 7 papers from before 1854, the first of which On the development of modular functions (49 pp.) was written in 1840.) In 1854 Weierstrass published the paper On the theory of Abelian functions in Crelle’s Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik (the first mathematical research journal, founded in 1826, and now referred to without Crelle’s name in the formal title). It created a sensation within the mathematical community. Here was a 39 year old school teacher whom no one within the mathematical community had heard of. And he had written a masterpiece, not only in its depth, but also in its mastery of an area. Recognition was