[2] Schwarz originally studied chemistry in Berlin but Ernst Eduard Kummer and Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass persuaded him to change to mathematics.

[5] From 1875 he worked at Göttingen University,[5] dealing with the subjects of complex analysis, differential geometry and the calculus of variations.

Schwarz's works include Bestimmung einer speziellen Minimalfläche, which was crowned by the Berlin Academy in 1867 and printed in 1871, and Gesammelte mathematische Abhandlungen (1890).

[7] His work on the latter allowed Émile Picard to show solutions of differential equations exist (the Picard–Lindelöf theorem).

[4] In 1914 Schwarz's friends and former students published a volume with 34 articles in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his doctoral dissertation.