His father, Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, came from Mecklenburg, had served in the war of freedom, and had finally settled as pastor in Quickborn.
Here with his five brothers and sisters Riemann spent his boyhood and received, chiefly from his father, the elements of his education.
The director, Schmalfuss, encouraged him in his mathematical studies by lending him books (among them Leonhard Euler's works and Adrien Marie Legendre's Theory of Numbers), which Riemann read, mastered and returned within a few days.
In 1846 Riemann entered himself as a student of philology and theology in the university of Göttingen.
This double cultivation of his scientific powers had the happiest effect on his subsequent work; for the greatest achievements of Riemann were effected by the application in pure mathematics generally of a method (theory of potential) which had up to this time been used solely in the solution of certain problems that arise in mathematical physics.