Jacobi, KARL GUSTAV JAKOB

Jacobi, KARL GUSTAV JAKOB, German mathematician, was born at Potsdam, 10th December 1804. He studied at the university of Berlin, and in 1827 was appointed extra-ordinary, and two years later ordinary professor of Mathematics at Königsberg. Jacobi excelled in analytical mathematics; his name is best known from his discovery of elliptic functions. Besides this he did most valuable work in connection with differential equations and the theory of numbers: his name is perpetuated in the theory of determinants. In 1829 he published his most celebrated work, Fundamenta nova Theorice Functionum Ellipticarum, for which he received the medal of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. Most of his other investigations were published in Crelle's Journal für Mathematik. Jacobi was acquainted with Gauss, Legendre, Abel, and other great mathematicians of his own day. In 1842 he retired from his chair, owing to ill-health, and settled at Berlin. He died in that city on 18th February 1851. His Gesammelte Werke (7 vols.) were published by the Berlin Academy in 1881-91.