You are here  Mathematics as the Science of Patterns - Jacob
Steiner and the Power of a Point  Michael N. Fried  Jacob
Steiner lived from 1796 until 1863.   He was a fascinating
figure in the history of mathematics not only because of the
depth and originality of his geometrical work but also because
of his unique educational background.  For he was born to a poor
peasant family that could hardly afford to send him to school;
he could not even write before the age of fourteen!  Luck came,
however, in the form of the great Swiss educational reformer,
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who discovered Steiner, and, in
1814, enrolled him in his school at Yverdon.  Later, in an
application to the Prussian Ministry of Education written in
1826, Steiner credited Pestalozzi’s methods in forming his
general approach to mathematics, his desire to find “the deeper
bases” of mathematical theorems (see Burckhardt, 1970 ).   In
1826, the same year he wrote the application just mentioned, he
also wrote a long article entitled “Ein