A few words about the lives of Euler and Riemann:
Analogies
Both Euler and Riemann received their early education at home, from their fathers, who were protestant ministers, and who both were hoping that their sons will become like them, pastors. At the age of fourteen, Euler attended a Gymnasium in Basel, while his parents lived in Riehen, a village near the city of Basel. At about the same age, Riemann was sent to a Gymnasium in Hanover, away from his parents. During their Gymnasium years, both Euler and Riemann lived with their grandmothers. They both enrolled a theological curriculum (at the Universities of Basel and G¨ottingen respectively), before they obtain their fathers’ approval to shift to mathematics.
Differences
Euler’s productive period lasted 57 years (from the age of 19, when he wrote his first paper, until his death at the age of 76). His written production comprises more than 800 memoirs and 50 books. His Opera Omnia fill over eighty volumes. He worked on all domains of mathematics (pure and applied) and physics(theoretical and practical) that existed at his epoch. He also published on geography, navigation, machine theory, ship building, telescopes, the making of optical instruments, philosophy, theology and music theory. Besides his research books, he wrote elementary schoolbooks, including a well-known book on the art of reckoning. The publication of his collected works was decided in 1907, the year of his bicentenary, the first volumes appeared in 1911, and the edition is still in progress (two volumes appeared in 2015), filling up to now more than 80 large volumes.
Unlike Euler’s, Riemann’s life was short. He published his first work at the age of 25 and he died at the age of 39. Thus, his productive period lasted only 15 years. His collected works stand in a single slim volume. Yet, from the points of view of the originality and the impact of their ideas, it would be unfair to affirm that either of them stands before the other. They both had an intimate and permanent relation to mathematics and to science in general.
- Looking backward: From Euler to Riemann
- If we had to mention a single mathematician of the eighteenth century, Euler would probably be the right choice. For the nineteenth century, it would be Riemann. And Gauss is the main figure astride the two centuries.
- Euler died on 18 September 1783.
- Riemann was born on 17 September 1826.