Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (10 December 1804 to 18 February 1851) was a German mathematician who made fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, determinants and number theory. He was born of Ashkenazi Jewish parentage in Potsdam, the second of four children of a banker, Simon Jacobi, and his elder brother Moritz also became known, as an engineer and physicist. He was first home schooled by his uncle Lehman and then attended the Potsdam Gymnasium, and in 1821 went to study at Berlin University, where he divided his attention between philology and mathematics and pursued private study of the works of Euler, Lagrange and Laplace.