Rudolf Otto Sigismund Lipschitz

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Rudolf Otto Sigismund Lipschitz

1832-1903

German mathematician whose most important work was in the areas of quadratic differential forms and mechanics in physics. His work on Hamilton-Jacobi methods of integrating equations of motion were readily applied to celestial mechanics to great effect. He also described the "Lipschitz condition"—an inequality guaranteeing a unique solution to certain differential equations. Lipschitz was also the first to apply a branch of mathematics called "Clifford algebras" to problems involving rotations of objects in Euclidean spaces.