Franz Josef Gerstner

Franz Josef von Gerstner was a Czech German physicist, astronomer and engineer, born in 1756 in Chomutov in Bohemia, then part of the Habsburg monarchy. He studied mathematics and astronomy in Prague, worked as an assistant at the Vienna observatory under Maximilian Hell, and from 1789 was professor of higher mathematics, mechanics and hydraulics at the university in Prague. His Theory of water waves of 1804 gave the trochoidal wave solution now called the Gerstner wave, the first correct nonlinear theory of deep water waves. He became the first director of the Polytechnic Institute in Prague, which survives as the Czech Technical University, wrote the three volume Handbook of mechanics, and in 1807 proposed a horse drawn railway between Ceske Budejovice and Linz, begun by his son. He died in 1832.