Elwin Bruno Christoffel
Elwin Bruno Christoffel was a German mathematician and physicist. He introduced fundamental concepts of differential geometry, opening the way for the development of tensor calculus, which would later provide the mathematical basis for general relativity.
Christoffel was born onNovember 1829 in Montjoie in Prussia in a family of cloth merchants. He was initially educated at home in languages and mathematics, then attended the Jesuit Gymnasium and the FriedrichWilhelms Gymnasium in Cologne. In 1850 he went to the University of Berlin, where he studied mathematics with Gustav Dirichlet among others, as well as attending courses in physics and chemistry. He received his doctorate in Berlin in 1856 for a thesis on the motion of electricity in homogeous bodies written under the supervision of Martin Ohm, Ernst Kummer and Heinrich Gustav Magnus.
Source: Wikipedia