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

[edit] History

Born in the Duchy of Prussia's capital Königsberg, part of Brandenburg-Prussia, Goldbach was the son of a pastor. He went to work at the newly opened St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1725. Later on, he was a tutor to the later Tsar Peter the Great in 1728. In 1742 he entered the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ^[1].

[edit] Contributions

Goldbach traveled widely throughout Europe and met with many famous mathematicians, such as Gottfried Leibniz, Leonhard Euler, and Nicholas I Bernoulli. He is most noted for his correspondence with these mathematicians, especially in his 1742 letter to Euler stating his Goldbach's Conjecture. He also studied and proved some theorems on perfect powers, and made several notable contributions to analysis ^[2]..

[edit] External links

• O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Christian Goldbach". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
• Electronic copies of Euler's correspondence with Goldbach