In 1883, while still a student at Königsberg, he was awarded the Mathematics Prize of the French Academy of Sciences for his manuscript on the theory of quadratic forms. Minkowski was educated in East Prussia at the Albertina University of Königsberg, where he earned his doctorate in 1885 under the direction of Ferdinand von Lindemann. Minkowski in 1883, at the time of being awarded the Mathematics Prize of the French Academy of Sciences The main-belt asteroid 12493 Minkowski and M-matrices are named in Minkowski's honor. Max Born delivered the obituary on behalf of the mathematics students at Göttingen. However, what death cannot take away is his noble image in our hearts and the knowledge that his spirit continues to be active in us. Now death has suddenly torn him from our midst. He was for me a rare gift from heaven and I must be grateful to have possessed that gift for so long. In it, we enjoyed looking for hidden pathways and discovered many a new perspective that appealed to our sense of beauty, and when one of us showed it to the other and we marveled over it together, our joy was complete. Our science, which we loved above all else, brought us together it seemed to us a garden full of flowers. Since my student years Minkowski was my best, most dependable friend who supported me with all the depth and loyalty that was so characteristic of him. David Hilbert's obituary of Minkowski illustrates the deep friendship between the two mathematicians (translated): Minkowski died suddenly of appendicitis in Göttingen on 12 January 1909. He married Auguste Adler in 1897 with whom he had two daughters the electrical engineer and inventor Reinhold Rudenberg was his son-in-law. Minkowski studied in Königsberg and taught in Bonn (1887–1894), Königsberg (1894–1896) and Zurich (1896–1902), and finally in Göttingen from 1902 until his death in 1909. To escape persecution in the Russian Empire the family moved to Königsberg in 1872, where the father became involved in rag export and later in manufacture of mechanical clockwork tin toys (he operated his firm Lewin Minkowski & Son with his eldest son Max). Hermann was a younger brother of the medical researcher Oskar (born 1858). Hermann Minkowski was born in the town of Aleksota, the Suwałki Governorate, the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire, to Lewin Boruch Minkowski, a merchant who subsidized the building of the choral synagogue in Kovno, and Rachel Taubmann, both of Jewish descent.
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