Carle David Tolm Runge (August 30, 1856 – January 3, 1927) was a German mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist. His first name is very often given as Carl.

He was co-developer and co-eponym of the Runge-Kutta method, in the field of what is today known as numerical analysis.

He spent the first few years of his life in Havana, where his father Julius Runge was the Danish consul. The family later moved to Bremen, where his father died early (in 1864).

In 1880 he received his Ph.D. in mathematics at Berlin, where he studied under Karl Weierstrass. In 1886 he became a professor in Hanover.

His interests included mathematics, spectroscopy, geodesy and astrophysics. In addition to pure mathematics he did a great deal of experimental work studying spectral lines of various elements, and was very interested in the application of this work to astronomical spectroscopy.

In 1904 he went to G ttingen, where he remained until he retired in 1925.

A crater on the Moon is named after him.

See also:

• Runge's phenomenon
• Runge's method for diophantine equations.

External links

• Biography (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Runge.html)
• Biography (http://numericalmethods.eng.usf.edu/anecdotes/runge.html)

Obituary

• ApJ 69 (1929) 317 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0069//0000317.000.html)