Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-66), German mathematician, who developed a system of geometry that aided the development of modern theoretical physics.

Riemann was born in Breselenz, and educated at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. His doctoral thesis, “Foundations for a General Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable,” submitted in 1851, was an outstanding contribution to function theory. From 1857 until his death he was professor of mathematics at the University of Göttingen. The significance of Riemannian geometry lies in its use and extension of both Euclidean geometry and the geometry of surfaces, leading to a number of generalized differential geometries. Its most important effect was that it made a geometrical application possible for some major abstractions of tensor analysis, leading to the pattern and concepts for general relativity later used by Albert Einstein in developing his theory of relativity. Riemannian geometry is also necessary for treating electricity and magnetism in the framework of general relativity.