mathematics

Peter Burmeister

Peter Burmeister is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Peter Burmeister rather than just read about it. In short: Peter Burmeister (16 July 1941 – 20 January 2019) was a German mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics at Darmstadt University of Technology.

Key takeaways

Peter Burmeister belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Peter Burmeister to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Peter Burmeister from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Peter Burmeister (16 July 1941 – 20 January 2019) was a German mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics at Darmstadt University of Technology. He was born in Berlin, Germany. Burmeister died on 20 January 2019 in Reinheim, Germany at the age of 77.

Academic career Peter Burmeister studied mathematics at the Free University of Berlin with an exchange year at the University of Münster. In 1966, he received his PhD from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, supervised by Jürgen Schmidt, with a dissertation titled Über die Mächtigkeiten und Unabhängigkeitsgrade der Basen freier Algebren (On the Cardinalities and Independence Degrees of the Bases of Free Algebras). In 1971, he habilitated at the University of Bonn under Wolfram Schwabhäuser with the work Primitive Classes of Partial Algebras. The same year, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He retired in 2004.

Work Peter Burmeister's research interests focused on Universal algebra, particularly partial algebras. He was also interested in order theory, lattice theory, Formal concept analysis, and conceptual knowledge processing, as well as the foundations of geometry and discrete mathematics, especially graph theory. His most important publication, according to his own account, is A Model Theoretic Oriented Approach to Partial Algebras with more than 500 pages. Together with Rudolf Wille, he worked in the Arbeitsgruppe Allgemeine Algebra (General Algebra Group) and the Forschungsgruppe Begriffsanalyse (Concept Analysis Research Group). He was a founding member of the Ernst-Schröder-Center for Conceptual Knowledge Processing e.V. and served on its board. Building on the algorithm developed by Bernhard Ganter for calculating a concept lattice, Peter Burmeister developed the software ConImp (Contexts & Implications). This software allows for the editing and evaluation of formal contexts, particularly through the computation of the canonical basis and feature exploration – even with incomplete knowledge. Insights for this work came from Burmeister's doctoral student Richard Holzer, who developed the dissertation Methoden der formalen Begriffsanalyse bei der Behandlung unvollständigen Wissens (Methods of Formal Concept Analysis for Handling Incomplete Knowledge).

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Peter Burmeister

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Peter Burmeister claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Peter Burmeister before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Peter Burmeister ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Peter Burmeister

In research: Peter Burmeister appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Peter Burmeister in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Peter Burmeister is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1941 births, 2019 deaths, 20th-century German mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Peter Burmeister outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Peter Burmeister in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Peter Burmeister means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Peter Burmeister out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Peter Burmeister in simple terms?

Peter Burmeister (16 July 1941 – 20 January 2019) was a German mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics at Darmstadt University of Technology.

Why does Peter Burmeister matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Peter Burmeister?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Peter Burmeister.