former teacher Kummer who had just taken over Dirichlet's mathematics chair. Over the following years Kronecker published numerous papers resulting from his previous years' independent research. As a result of this published research, he was elected a member of the Berlin Academy in 1861. Although he held no official university position, Kronecker had the right as a member of the Academy to hold classes at the University of Berlin and he decided to do so, starting in 1862. In 1866, when Riemann died, Kronecker was offered the mathematics chair at the University of Göttingen (previously held by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Dirichlet), but he refused, preferring to keep his position at the Academy. Only in 1883, when Kummer retired from the university, was Kronecker invited to succeed him and became an ordinary professor. Kronecker was the supervisor of Kurt Hensel, Adolf Kneser, Mathias Lerch, and Franz Mertens, amongst others. His philosophical view of mathematics put him in conflict with several mathematicians over the years, notably straining his relationship with Weierstrass, who almost decided to leave the university in 1888. Kronecker died on 29 December 1891 in Berlin, several months after the death of his wife. In the last year of his life, he converted to Christianity. He is buried in the Alter St Matthäus Kirchhof cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg, close to Gustav Kirchhoff. Scientific activity Mathematics research An important part of Kronecker's research focused on number theory and algebra. In an 1853 paper on the theory of equations and Galois theory he formulated the Kronecker–Weber theorem, without however offering a definitive proof (the theorem was proved completely much later by David Hilbert). He also introduced the structure theorem for finitely-generated abelian groups. Kronecker studied elliptic functions and conjectured his "liebster Jugendtraum" ("dearest dream of youth"), a generalization that was later put forward by Hilbert in a modified form as his twelfth problem. In an 1850 paper, On the Solution of the General Equation of the Fifth Degree, Kronecker solved the quintic equation by applying group theory (though his solution was not in terms of radicals: that was already proven impossible by the Abel–Ruffini theorem). In algebraic number theory Kronecker introduced the theory of divisors as an alternative to Dedekind's theory of ideals, which he did not find acceptable for philosophical reasons. Although the general adoption of Dedekind's approach led Kronecker's theory to be ignored for a long time, his divisors were