Christian Goldbach

Christian Goldbach was a mathematician of the seventeenth century. He was born on 18 March 1690, in Konigsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad,

Russia). While living in St. Petersburg, Russia, he became a professor of mathematics and historian. Interestingly, he is only remembered for his work in mathematics. Later in his career, approximately 1728, he tutored

Tsar Peter the Second in Moscow, then and now, the countries’ capital. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and meeting a variety of mathematicians.

Goldbach did much of his work through correspondence with other mathematicians of his acquaintance. He did some important mathematical work on number theory. Of all his works, he is remembered for Goldbach

Conjecture. Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory.

The conjecture states “every even number greater than two can be written as the sum of two primes.” It should be remembered that the same prime may be used twice.

For example: 4 = 2 + 2 6 = 3 + 3 8 = 3 + 5 10 = 3 + 7 = 5 + 5 12 = 5 + 7 14 = 3 + 11 = 7 + 7

Goldbach died on 20 November 1764, in Moscow, Russia, at the age of 74.