VI.17 Christian Goldbach

b. Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), 1690; d. Moscow, 1764

Professor of Mathematics, Imperial Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg (1725–28); tutor to Tsarevitch Peter II, Moscow (1728–30); corresponding secretary and administrator, Imperial Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg (1732–42); Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1742–64)


Goldbach is remembered today for the conjecture that bears his name: that every even number greater than 2 is a sum of two primes. This was first stated by EULER [VI.19] in 1742 in a letter to Goldbach in response to the earlier proposal by Goldbach that every number greater than 2 is a sum of three primes (Goldbach considered 1 as a prime number). Goldbach’s conjecture, together with the weaker conjecture that every odd number is either prime or the sum of three primes, was first published by WARING [VI.21] in 1770 but without attribution. Both conjectures remain unsolved. However, Vinogradov proved that every sufficiently large odd number is the sum of three primes: see PROBLEMS AND RESULTS IN ADDITIVE NUMBER THEORY [V.27].

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