Christian Goldbach

Christian Goldbach (March 18, 1690 – November 20, 1764) was a German mathematician who also studied law. He is remembered today for Goldbach's conjecture.

Biography

Born in the Duchy of Prussia's capital Königsberg, part of Brandenburg-Prussia, Goldbach was the son of a pastor. He studied at the Royal Albertus University. After finishing his studies he went on long educational voyages from 1710 to 1724 through Europe, visiting other German states, England, Holland, Italy, and France, meeting with many famous mathematicians, such as Gottfried Leibniz, Leonhard Euler, and Nicholas I Bernoulli. Back in Königsberg he got acquainted with Georg Bernhard Bilfinger and Jakob Hermann.

He went on to work at the newly opened St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1725, as a professor of mathematics and historian of the academy. In 1728, when Peter II became Tsar of Russia, Goldbach became his tutor. In 1742 he entered the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Christian Goldbach was multilingual – he wrote a diary which was written in German and Latin, his letters were written in German, Latin, French, and Italian and for official documents he used Russian, German and Latin.

He died on November 20, 1764 at age of 74, in Moscow.

Contributions

Goldbach is most noted for his correspondence with Leibniz, Euler, and Bernoulli, especially in his 1742 letter to Euler stating his Goldbach's conjecture. He also studied and proved some theorems on perfect powers, such as the Goldbach–Euler theorem, and made several notable contributions to analysis. He also proved a result concerning Fermat numbers that is called Goldbach's theorem.

Works

• (1729) De transformatione serierum
• (1732) De terminis generalibus serierum