Background
Christian Goldbach was born on March 18, 1690, in Königsberg, Brandenburg-Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russian Federation). He was the son of a pastor.
st. Alexander Nevsky, 14, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Region, Russia, 236041
Goldbach studied medicine and mathematics at the University of Königsberg (today Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University).
Kaliningrad, Russian Federation
Christian Goldbach
educator mathematician scientist
Christian Goldbach was born on March 18, 1690, in Königsberg, Brandenburg-Prussia (today Kaliningrad, Russian Federation). He was the son of a pastor.
Goldbach studied medicine and mathematics at the University of Königsberg (today Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal 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
Goldbach 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 he moved to Moscow and became tutor to Tsarevich Peter II and his distant cousin Anna of Courland. Peter’s sudden death in 1730 ended Goldbach’s teaching career but not his connections with the imperial court. He continued to serve Peter’s successor Anna and returned to St. Petersburg and the Imperial Academy only when she moved the court there in 1732. While in Moscow in 1729, Goldbach began the exchange of letters with Leonhard Euler that would continue regularly until 1763.
Returning to the Imperial Academy in 1732, Goldbach quickly rose to a commanding position. Under the presidency of Baron Johann-Albrecht Korf, he was first designated corresponding secretary and later named a Kollegialrat and, together with J. D. Schuhmacher, was charged with the administration of the Academy. At the same time he rose steadily in court and government circles. The two roles began to conflict seriously in 1740, when Goldbach requested release from administrative duties at the Academy. His promotion to Staatsrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1742 ended his ties to the Imperial Academy. In 1744 his new position was confirmed with a raise in salary and a grant of land. In 1760 he attained the high rank of privy councilor at 3,000 rubles annually. That same year he set down guidelines for the education of the royal children that served as a model during the next century.
Goldbach’s mathematical education set the pattern for his episodic career. Rather than engaging in systematic reading and study, he apparently learned his mathematics in bits and pieces from the various people he met, with the result that later he frequently repeated results already achieved or was unable to take full advantage of his insights. Unable to understand a treatise by Jakob I Bernoulli on the subject, loaned to him by Nikolaus, he dropped the matter until 1717, when he read Leibniz’s article on the quadrature of the circle in the Acta eruditorum. His reawakened interest led to his own article “Specimen methodi ad summas serierum,” which appeared in the Acta in 1720. Only afterward did Goldbach discover that the substance of his article formed part of Jakob I’s Ars conjectandi, published in 1713.
Of Goldbach’s other published articles, the two on infinite series - “De transformatione serierum” and “De terminis generalibus serierum” - and the one on the theory of equations, “Criteria quaedam aequationum,” show the greatest originality.
Goldbach first proposed the conjecture that bears his name in a letter to the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1742. He claimed that “every number greater than 2 is an aggregate of three prime numbers.” Because mathematicians in Goldbach’s day considered 1 a prime number (prime numbers are now defined as those positive integers greater than 1 that are divisible only by 1 and themselves), Goldbach’s conjecture is usually restated in modern terms as: Every even natural number greater than 2 is equal to the sum of two prime numbers.
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.
(Volume 1)
1765(Volume 2)
1766Goldbach was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Coupled with a vast erudition that equally well addressed mathematics and science or philology and archaeology, and with a superb command of Latin style and equal fluency in German and French, Goldbach’s polished manners and cosmopolitan circle of friends and acquaintances assured his success in an elite society struggling to emulate its western neighbors. But this very erudition and political success prevented Goldbach’s obvious talent in mathematics from attaining its full promise. Unable or unwilling to concentrate his efforts, he dabbled in mathematics, achieving nothing of lasting value but stimulating others through his flashes of insight.