Karl Heun Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-11-05
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A German mathematician who studied linear differential equations and later held a chair in technical mechanics at Karlsruhe. His work on second-order equations with four singular points led to the Heun equation, extending the family associated with the hypergeometric differential equation.
His name is also attached to Heun's method, a predictor-corrector Runge-Kutta method for numerical integration. The predictor estimates an endpoint slope and the correction averages it with the initial slope. The special-function equation and the numerical method are distinct contributions linked by the study of differential equations, rather than two names for the same construction. [ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Karl Heun
. Historical portrait hosted by Wikimedia Commons; attribution and licensing are recorded on the source page. Source.
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