Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi

Born in Potsdam on 10 December 1804, Jacobi entered mathematics at a moment when the field was hungry for new methods. His fundamental contributions came early: elliptic functions, determinants, differential equations, dynamics, number theory - each area bears techniques he either invented or revolutionized. Working through the 1820s and beyond, he built the scaffolding that later generations would climb. He died in Berlin on 18 February 1851, forty-six years old, leaving behind a body of work that made the abstract rigorous and the rigorous usable.