Carl Hindenburg

Carl Friedrich Hindenburg (13 July 1741 to 17 March 1808) was a German mathematician, born in Dresden, whose work centered mostly on combinatorics and probability. He did not attend school but was educated at home by a private tutor arranged by his merchant father, then entered the University of Leipzig in 1757 and took courses in medicine, philosophy, Latin, Greek, physics, mathematics and aesthetics. He published on philology in 1763 and 1769. The lecturer Christian Fürchtegott Gellert mentored him and introduced him to a student named Schönborn, whose interest in mathematics drew Hindenburg into the field. He took a master's degree at Leipzig in 1771 and was made Privatdozent there, became professor of philosophy in 1781, and in 1786 professor of physics after presenting a dissertation on water pumps.