Joseph Neuberg attended the Athénée de Luxembourg where his work was outstanding, then progressed to the École normale des Sciences of the Facultée de Sciences at the University of Ghent in 1859. He graduated in 1862.
The first part of Neuberg's career was spent in various colleges. He was professor at the École Normale de Nivelle from 1862 to 1865, then at the Athénée Royal d'Arlon from 1865 to 1867, and then at the Athénée Royal and the École Normale at Bruges from 1868 to 1878.
Neuberg was professor at the Athénée royal of Liège from 1878 to 1884 and then extraordinary professor at the university in Liège from 1884 to 1887, being ordinary professor from 1887 until he retired in 1910. At Liège he taught analysis, higher algebra, descriptive geometry, projective geometry, analytic geometry, and the foundations of mathematics.
Although he was a citizen of Luxembourg, Neuberg took Belgium nationality in 1866 and was elected to the Belgium Royal Academy. In fact he achieved the honour of being elected as President of the Academy in 1911 after he retired from his chair at Liège.
Quetelet and Garnier edited the Belgium publication Correspondance mathématique et physique. In 1874 Neuberg, together with Catalan and Mansion, founded a journal Nouvelle correspondance mathématique named to honour the earlier Correspondance mathématique et physique.
This journal founded by Mansion, Catalan and Neuberg was published between 1874 and 1880. After this Catalan encouraged Mansion and Neuberg to collaborate in publishing a new journal and, indeed, they did precisely this, publishing Mathesis from 1881 onwards.
Neuberg worked on the geometry of the triangle, discovering many interesting new details but no large new theory. Pelseneer writes in [1]:-
The considerable body of his work is scattered among a large number of articles for journals; in it the influence of A Möbius is clear.
Neuberg's life and work are discussed in [2]. In addition to his membership of the Belgium Royal Academy discussed above, he was a member of many other learned societies, including the Institute of Science of Luxembourg, the Royal Society of Science of Liège, and the Mathematical Society of Amsterdam.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
May 2000