Bernhard Riemann was a great nineteenth century mathematician whose work was used by Albert Einstein when he formulated the general theory of relativity. Riemann was born in Breselenz, Germany, and he began to study for the ministry but later persuaded his father (a Lutheran pastor) to allow him to study mathematics. His abilities were such that his PhD won the accolade of public praise from Gauss. He later made brilliant contributions to many branches of mathematics, notably the theory of functions of a complex variable, and the definition of the definite integral as the limit of a sum of elements, as their number tends to infinity and their size becomes infinitesimally small (the Riemann integral). Riemann investigated how concepts such as distance and curvature could be defined in such a way that they could be applied to geometries that are not Euclidean. It was the results of this work on geometry that Einstein used to such effect when he considered the non-Euclidean space-time frameworks of the general theory of relativity (1915). Riemann was forced to retire through illness when he was only 34 and died six years later from tuberculosis.
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