1823-1852

German mathematician who in his short life published a tremendous amount of research in the areas of quadratic and cubic forms and elliptic functions. Eisenstein was inspired to study mathematics after meeting William Rowan Hamilton, who gave him a copy of a paper he had recently written on a difficult problem in mathematics. Eisenstein pursued his research in spite of chronically poor health, writing papers even while bedridden. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 29 in his native Berlin.