Grassmanns

Grassmanns is a surname of German origin. The most prominent bearer is Hermann Grassmann (1809–1877), a German linguist and mathematician whose pioneering work in algebra and geometry influenced later developments in linear and multilinear algebra. He introduced concepts that culminated in what is now called Grassmann algebra or exterior algebra.

In mathematics, Grassmann algebra is an algebra over a vector space that encodes antisymmetric multilinear forms through the wedge product. It provides a formal framework for volumes, orientations, and differential forms, and underpins many constructions in differential geometry and mathematical physics. The Grassmannian is another construct named for Grassmann, describing the space of all k-dimensional subspaces of an n-dimensional vector space; it is central in algebraic geometry, topology, and representation theory.

The plural Grassmanns can refer to any people bearing the surname. In general usage, when encountered in scholarly writing, the name most often points to Hermann Grassmann and to the mathematical concepts that bear his name.