Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi


Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804 - 1851) Jewish-German mathematician best known for the Jacobian matrix and the Jacobi symbolDlmfMathworldPlanetmath.

The second son of a successful banker, young Carl was home-schooled until the age of 12, when he entered the Potsdam high school. Four years after earning a degree from Berlin University in 1825 and converting to Catholicism, Jacobi became a mathematics professor there and taught for a dozen years. He read Greek and Latin fluently, and was quite familiar with the work of Leonhard Euler (http://planetmath.org/EulerLeonhard). In the late 1820s, Jacobi did significant work on elliptic functionsMathworldPlanetmath in relation to fractions, attracting the interest and praise of Carl Friedrich Gauss (http://planetmath.org/CarlFriedrichGauss) and Adrien-Marie Legendre. In 1843, Jacobi went on a vacation to Italy, beginning his retirement.

A lunar crater is named after Jacobi.

Title Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
Canonical name CarlGustavJacobJacobi
Date of creation 2013-03-22 16:49:51
Last modified on 2013-03-22 16:49:51
Owner PrimeFan (13766)
Last modified by PrimeFan (13766)
Numerical id 6
Author PrimeFan (13766)
Entry type Biography
Classification msc 01A55
Synonym Jacques Simon Jacobi