Otto Hesse

Life

Hesse was born in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) as the son of Johann Gottlieb Hesse, a businessman and brewery owner and his wife Anna Karoline Reiter (1788–1865). He studied in his hometown at the Albertina under Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. Among his teachers were count Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel and Friedrich Julius Richelot. He earned his doctorate in 1840 at the University of Königsberg with the dissertation De octo punctis intersectionis trium superficium secundi ordinis. In 1841, Hesse completed his habilitation thesis. In the same year he married Sophie Marie Emilie Dulk, the daughter of pharmacists and chemistry professor Friedrich Philipp Dulk (1788–1852). The couple had a son and five daughters. Hesse taught for some time physics and chemistry at the Vocational School in Königsberg and lectured at the Albertina. In 1845 he was appointed associate professor in Königsberg. In 1855 he moved to Halle and in 1856 to Heidelberg until 1868, when he finally moved to Munich to the newly established Polytechnic School. In 1869 he joined the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

His doctoral students include Olaus Henrici, Gustav Kirchhoff, Jacob Lüroth, Adolph Mayer, Carl Neumann, Max Noether, Ernst Schröder, and Heinrich Martin Weber.