Bernhard Riemann

Here is a revised memorial biography for Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, refined and improved using verified historical and scholarly sources. I have preserved only well-supported facts and omitted any unverified or anecdotal information.

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Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was born on 17 September 1826 in Breselenz (Jameln), near Dannenberg in the Kingdom of Hanover, Germany (mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk). He was the second of six children born to Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife, Charlotte Ebell (deutsche-biographie.de). His early education was conducted at home under his father's guidance, later supported by a local tutor named Schulz (mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk). In Easter 1840 he began studies at the Lyceum in Hanover; after his grandmother’s death in 1842, he transferred to the Johanneum Gymnasium in Lüneburg (mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk).

Riemann enrolled at the University of Göttingen in spring 1846, initially studying theology and philology before dedicating himself fully to mathematics, under the influence of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Moritz Abraham Stern (deutsche-biographie.de). He continued his studies at the University of Berlin, attending lectures by Dirichlet, Eisenstein, and Jacobi (deutsche-biographie.de). Riemann returned to Göttingen in 1849, received his doctorate under Gauss in 1851, and completed his habilitation in 1854 (deutsche-biographie.de). In 1857 he became an extraordinary professor, and in 1859 an ordinary professor at Göttingen (deutsche-biographie.de).

Riemann's mathematical achievements are foundational. He defined the concept now known as the Riemann integral, made pioneering contributions to complex analysis through the notion of Riemann surfaces, and established key ideas in differential geometry that would later underpin the framework of general relativity (cambridge.org). In his celebrated 1859 paper on the distribution of prime numbers, he introduced what came to be known as the Riemann hypothesis, which remains one of the most profound unsolved problems in analytic number theory (cambridge.org).

In recognition of his achievements, Riemann was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in June 1866, and held memberships in esteemed academic academies in Göttingen, Berlin, and Bavaria (en.wikipedia.org).

In his later years, Riemann's health deteriorated due to tuberculosis. Seeking relief, he traveled to Italy in 1862 and again in 1866. He died of the illness on 20 July 1866 in Selasca, near Intra on Lake Maggiore (now part of Verbania) and was buried in the cemetery at Biganzolo, Verbania (treccani.it).

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This refined biography maintains fidelity to verified historical details and removes speculative or unverified assertions.