His parents, Isidor and Johanna (née Prausnitzep), took care of their children's education and provided them with private tutoring at home—Leopold's younger brother Hugo Kronecker would also follow a scientific path, later becoming a notable physiologist.

Kronecker then went to the Liegnitz Gymnasium where he was interested in a wide range of topics including science, history and philosophy, while also practicing gymnastics and swimming.

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.

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.

[3] He is buried in the Alter St Matthäus Kirchhof cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg, close to Gustav Kirchhoff.An important part of Kronecker's research focused on number theory and algebra.

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.

Although the general adoption of Dedekind's approach led Kronecker's theory to be ignored for a long time, his divisors were found useful and were revived by several mathematicians in the 20th century.