Bernhard Riemann’s legacy of 1859

Extract

The German version of Riemann’s Collected Works is confined to a single volume of 690 pages. Even so, this volume has had an abiding and profound impact on modern mathematics and physics, as we shall see. In fifteen years of activity, from 1851, when he gained his doctorate at the University of Göttingen, to his death in 1866, two months short of his fortieth birthday, Riemann contributed to almost all areas of mathematics. He perceived mathematics from the analytic point of view and used analysis to illuminate subjects as diverse as number theory and geometry. Although regarded principally as a mathematician Riemann had an abiding interest in physics and researched significantly in the methods of mathematical physics, particularly in the area of partial differential equations.