Gotthold Eisenstein - Early Life

Early Life

He was born into Jewish family. Gotthold Eisenstein's father was Johan Konstantin Eisenstein and his mother was Helene Pollack. Before Gotthold, who was their first child, was born they had converted from Judaism to become Protestants. From an early age, he demonstrated talent in mathematics, and also in music. As a young child he learned to play piano, and he continued to play and compose for the instrument throughout his life.

He suffered various health problems throughout his life, including meningitis as an infant, a disease which took the lives of all five of his brothers and sisters. In 1837, at the age of 14, he enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium, and soon thereafter at Friedrich Werder Gymnasium in Berlin. His teachers recognized his talents in mathematics, but by 15 years of age he had already learned all the material taught at the school, and he began to study differential calculus from the works of Euler and Lagrange.

At 17, still a student, Eisenstein began to attend classes given by Dirichlet and others at the University of Berlin. In 1842, before taking his final exams, he traveled with his mother to England, to search for his father. In 1843 he met Hamilton in Dublin, who gave him a copy of his book on Niels Henrik Abel's proof of the impossibility of solving fifth degree polynomials, a work which would stimulate Eisenstein's interest in mathematical research.