Christian Goldbach

Christian Goldbach, who lived from 1690 to 1764, was a Prussian mathematician remembered for Goldbach's conjecture, stated in a 1742 letter to Leonhard Euler, and for the Goldbach-Euler theorem. The son of a pastor, he was born in Konigsberg, studied at the Royal Albertus University, and then travelled through Europe from 1710 to 1724, meeting Leibniz, Nicholas Bernoulli and other leading mathematicians and briefly attending Oxford. In 1725 he joined the newly opened Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences as professor of mathematics and historian of the academy, and in 1737 he jointly led it. He tutored the young Peter II, moved with the Russian court, and in 1742 left the academy for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he served until his death in Moscow. His 196 letters to Euler over 35 years kept Euler focused on number theory.