Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
Native spelling: Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet
1805–1859, Düren, First French Empire (now Germany), Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover (now Germany)
German mathematician whose work founded modern analytic number theory, including the first proof that every reduced arithmetic progression contains infinitely many primes.
Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet studied in Paris, where he encountered the work of Fourier, and later taught in Breslau and Berlin before succeeding Gauss at Göttingen. He introduced Dirichlet characters and used their L-functions to prove in 1837 that every arithmetic progression a, a+n, a+2n, ... with gcd(a,n)=1 contains infinitely many primes. His work also made major contributions to Fourier series, convergence, potential theory, quadratic forms, and the rigorous study of functions. The Dirichlet principle and Dirichlet problem became central tools in analysis and mathematical physics.
Workplaces: University of Breslau, University of Berlin, University of Göttingen
Germany, France