Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

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

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 functions 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 CarlGustavJacobJacobi 2013-03-22 16:49:51 2013-03-22 16:49:51 PrimeFan (13766) PrimeFan (13766) 6 PrimeFan (13766) Biography msc 01A55 Jacques Simon Jacobi