This paper examines the life and the work of the 19th century German
mathematician Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, whose ideas concerning
geometry of space had a profound effect on the development of modern theoretical physics, including providing the foundation for the concepts and methods used later in relativity theory. From the paper: "An examination of the facts of Riemann's family background would not have led one to suspect that he would have become the great mathematician that he would develoo into. He was the second of six children of a Lutheran
pastor and it was this pastor/father who gave him his first formal education. Indeed, much of his early
education was centered in his family, which was by all accounts both happy and deeply devout. He later attended the local high school, where he made quick and substantial progress in mathematics, soon moving beyond the ability of his teachers to educate him further (Laugwitz 38-41). He quickly mastered calculus and theory of
numbers of Adrien-Marie Legendre. After graduating from the high school (or gymnasium), he studied at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin from 1846-51. It was at this point in his education that he became interested in problems concerning the theory of prime numbers, elliptic functions, and geometry, theoretical interests that would guide much of his later work."
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