Mathematician Bernhard Riemann was born #OTD in 1826.
Bernhard Riemann was another mathematical giant hailing from northern Germany. Poor, shy, sickly and devoutly religious, the young Riemann constantly amazed his teachers and exhibited exceptional mathematical skills (such as fantastic mental calculation abilities) from an early age, but suffered from timidity and a fear of speaking in public. He was, however, given free rein of the school library by an astute teacher, where he devoured mathematical texts by Legendre and others, and gradually groomed himself into an excellent mathematician. He also continued to study the Bible intensively, and at one point even tried to prove mathematically the correctness of the Book of Genesis.
Although he started studying philology and theology in order to become a priest and help with his family’s finances, Riemann’s father eventually managed to gather enough money to send him to study mathematics at the renowned University of Göttingen in 1846, where he first met, and attended the lectures of, Carl Friedrich Gauss. Indeed, he was one of the very few who benefited from the support and patronage of Gauss, and he gradually worked his way up the University’s hierarchy to become a professor and, eventually, head of the mathematics department at Göttingen.
