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  • Essay / Bernhard Riemann: Immorality in the Life of Immortality

    Immortality is a fantasy that human civilization has been fantasizing with for centuries. Ideas of eternal life, legends and myths have been passed down from generation to generation of people who achieved this obscure goal. Let us ask ourselves; ultimately, what really determines immortality? It is clear that the human body will, whatever happens, have a predetermined end from dust to dust. We need to stop and rethink the true meaning of the word immortality. Immortals are those who are forever remembered throughout history for their achievements throughout their mortal lives. Bernhard Riemann is one of those figures who achieved greatness throughout his life and as long as mathematics is vital to us all and immortal, he will be. Born in the summer of September 17, 1826 in Breselenz, now modern Kingdom of Hanover. Germany, the son of Friederich Riemann, a Lutheran minister married to Charlotte Ebell, was the second of six children, two male and four female. Charlotte Ebell died before seeing any of her six children reach adulthood. As a child, Riemann was a shy child who suffered numerous nervous breakdowns preventing him from speaking publicly, but he demonstrated exceptional skills in mathematics early on. At the age of fourteen, Bernhard moved to Hanover to live with his grandmother and enter third class at the Lynceum. Two years later, his grandmother also died. He then moved to Johanneum Gymnasium in Lunberg and entered high school. During these years, Riemann studied the Bible, Hebrew, and theology, but was often amused and sidelined by mathematics. Showing such interest in mathematics, the gymnasium director often allowed Riemann to lend some mathematics... in the middle of a sheet... and a functional equation for the zeta function. The main purpose of the equation was to give estimates of the prime number less than a given number. Many of his collected results were later proven by Hadamard and Vallée Poussin. Riemann's work affects our world today because he laid the foundation for geometry and when other mathematicians attempted to prove his theory, they accidentally made other deep and significant contributions to mathematics. Bernhard Riemann's most influential collaborators were his teachers, including Gauss, Weber, Listing and Dirichlet. Perhaps of the four Gauss and Dirichlet had the most influence on him, Gauss guided him as a mentor and Dirichlet's work gave him the principle on which his work was based. Immortals are those who will be remembered forever throughout history. Bernhard Riemann died on July 20, 1866 at the age of thirty-nine..