Ernst Reinhold Eduard Hoppe (November 18, 1816 – May 7, 1900) was a German mathematician who worked as a professor at the University of Berlin.
[1][2] Hoppe was a student of Johann August Grunert at the University of Greifswald,[3] graduating in 1842 and becoming an English and mathematics teacher.
He completed his doctorate in 1850 in Halle and his habilitation in mathematics in 1853 in Berlin under Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.
[7] He is sometimes credited with having proven Isaac Newton's conjecture on the kissing number problem, that at most twelve congruent balls can touch a central ball of the same radius, but his proof was incorrect, and a valid proof was not found until 1953.
[9] In his work on special functions, Hoppe belonged to the Königsburg school of thought, led by Carl Jacobi.