Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was born in Potsdam in 1804 into a Jewish banking family. He studied at the University of Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1825, and began lecturing shortly afterwards. In 1826 he moved to the University of Königsberg, where he was appointed professor in 1832 and spent most of his working life.

Jacobi is best known for founding, alongside Niels Henrik Abel, the theory of elliptic functions. His 1829 work Fundamenta Nova Theoriae Functionum Ellipticarum established the subject and introduced the theta functions that bear his name. He also worked on determinants, giving rise to the Jacobian matrix and determinant, and on number theory, differential equations and dynamics, where the Hamilton-Jacobi equation remains central to classical mechanics.

Ill health led him to leave Königsberg in 1843. He settled in Berlin and died there of smallpox in 1851, aged 46.