The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Jacobi, Karl Gustav Jakob

JACOBI, Karl Gustav Jakob, German mathematician: b. Potsdam, 10 Dec 1804; d. Berlin, 18 Feb. 1851. He obtained his education at the University of Berlin, where he studied especially mathematics and philosophy, later in 1824 becoming a privat-docent there. In 1825 he became assistant professor of mathematics at Königsberg and in 1827 was appointed professor. He was appointed a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1836 and from 1842 till his death in 1851 lectured at the University of Berlin. His most important work was on the theory of elliptic functions, but he also made some valuable contributions to the theory of numbers and determinants. Only a small portion of his writings and lectures were published during his lifetime and the greater part of these were published in the Crelles Journal. Among these are ‘Fundamenta Nova Theoriæ Functionum Ellipticarum’ (1829); ‘Canon Arithmeticus’ (1839); ‘De Formatione et Proprietatibus Determinantium’ (1841); ‘Mathematische Werke’ (1846-71), A complete edition of his works, ‘Gesammelte Werke,’ was published in seven volumes by the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1881-91). His ‘Vorlesungen über Dynamik’ did not appear till 1866, long after his death, and later in 1895, his essay, ‘Uber die vierfach periodischen Functionen Zweier Variabeln’ was published in Latin. Consult Königsberger, ‘Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi’ (Leipzig 1904).