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In the 1850s, Riemann introduced the fundamental concept of a Riemann surface. Riemann's methods relied on an assumption he called Dirichlet's principle, which in 1870 was questioned by Weierstrass. Much later, in 1900, Hilbert justified Riemann's approach by developing the direct method in the calculus of variations. In the 1860s and 1870s, Clebsch, Gordan, Brill, and especially M. Noether

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