What is Bernhard Riemann?
[[File:Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann.jpeg|thumb|Bernhard Riemann 1863]] '''Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann''' (17 September 1826 near [[Hanover]] {{ndash}} 20 July 1866 Selasca, [[Italy]]) was a German [[mathematician]]. He had a short life and did not write down very much about his discoveries, but the things he discovered were all extremely important and had a revolutionary effect on [[mathematics]]. He contributed to many fields of mathematics, such as [[analysis]], [[geometry]], [[mathematical physics]] and [[number theory]]. Today, many people see him as a great mathematician. He was among the first mathematicians that worked on [[complex analysis]]. The kind of geometry he started (which is called [[Riemannian geometry]] today) is one of the bases of the [[theory of relativity]], developed by [[Albert Einstein]]. ==Life== ===Childhood=== Bernhard Riemann was the second child in a family of six children. His father was a [[Lutheran]] [[pastor]]. The family was very poor and did not have much to eat. Several of the children died, and Bernhard always had poor health. His parents were loving, but he was a very [[shy]] boy. Later in life he had to try very hard to be brave enough to speak in public. His father was one of his first teachers. The young boy was very keen to learn about everything. When he was ten he had a specialist maths teacher, but he was often better at maths than his teacher. When he was 14, he went to Hanover where he lived with his grandmother so that he could go to a [[Gymnasium (school)|Gymnasium]] school. His father wanted him to be a [[priest]], but Bernhard was much too shy to [[preach]] to people. In the end he let him study maths. There is a well-known story from Riemann’s school days. The school director, Milo Mizner, excused him from maths lessons because the lessons were much too easy for him. Bernhard asked the director whether he could borrow a difficult maths book to read, so the director lent him ''Théorie des Nombres'' (Theory of Numbers) by [[:en:Adrien-M