Correspondence of Leonhard Euler with Christian Goldbach: Volume 1 2016 ed. [Kietas viršelis]

When Leonhard Euler arrived at the Russian Academy of Sciences, at the age of 20, his career was supported and promoted by the Academy’s secretary, the Prussian jurist and amateur mathematician Christian Goldbach (1690–1764). Their encounter matured into a lifelong friendship, as witnessed by nearly 200 letters sent over 35 years.

This exchange – Euler’s most substantial long-term correspondence – has now been edited for the first time with an English translation, an ample commentary and documentary indices. These present an overview of 18th-century number theory, its sources and repercussions, many details for the protagonists’ biographies and a plethora of mosaic tiles for a panorama of academic life in St. Petersburg and Berlin between 1725 and 1765.

Part I includes the introduction and the original texts of the Euler-Goldbach letters while Part II presents the English translations and the documentary indices.