Christian Goldbach was born on the 18th of March 1690 in Koenigsberg (Konigsberg)

He became a professor of mathematics and history in 1725 at Saint Petersburg where he taught for the next three years.

Then in 1728 he left Saint Petersburg and went to Moscow in order to be a personal tutor to Tsar Peter II during this period he also travelled a great deal throughout Europe meeting with other famous mathematicians including Leibniz, Hermann and the Bernoulli brothers.

Goldbach studied infinite sums, the theory of curves and the theory of equations but his most important work was done in number theory. Goldbach is most famous for his first conjecture (every even number greater than 2 in the sum of 2 primes) which he made in letter to Euler (with whom he was in close correspondence for much of his career.) in 1742.

Goldbach also conjectured that every odd number greater than 3 is the sum of 3 primes but for some reason this conjecture is much less famous.

Goldbach died on the 20th of November 1764 in Moscow.