(September 17, 1826 – July 20, 1866)

Despite recurrent ill health and a lifespan of 39 years, Georg Bernhard Riemann emerged as the greatest of all European mathematicians born in 19th century. He is as well among the most productive. In terms of ingenuity, he was genius par excellence. His mentors included some of the world’s best professors: masterminds such as Carl Gauss, Gustav Jacobi, Gotthold Eisenstein, Peter Dirichlet, Jakob Steiner, Moritz Stern and Carl Goldschmidt. Riemann dissected Number Theory and projected Complex Analysis in a manner that stunned everyone except Gauss. His extraordinary flair ushered-in trailblazing works on Differential Geometry. As if that was not enough, he expanded Non-Euclidean Geometry beyond all contemporary scopes: well-into their future. The brilliance and the originality of his concepts had everyone referring to Elliptic Geometry as Riemannian Geometry. He was the don whose geometrical prowess unveiled the viability of General Relativity, whose topological realms Henri Poincaré later conjured, before Hermann Minkowski even explained them to Albert Einstein. So, as we applaud Einstein for Relativity, we remain mindful that Riemannian Geometry assigned hyperdimensions to our physical reality some 20 years before Einstein was born; and a century before Superstring Theory was developed. Georg Bernhard Riemann was equally magnificent in Topology, Astronomy and Mathematical Physics. Regarding his still-unresolved Riemann Hypothesis, David Hilbert heartily declared that assuming he wakes from dead after a millennium; his first question would be if Riemann Hypothesis has been proven. Alongside numerous honors, the 110-kilometer-wide Riemann lunar crater and the 4167 Riemann minor planet are dedicated to his memory.

 

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34 Comments

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  2. “One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.” by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

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