It is mesmerizing, but do note it was not a single mind that produced this insight. It was centuries of work. It involved, among many others:
1. Newton and the Bernoulli family developing the theory of infinite series and connecting them to discrete sequences,
2. Wallis developing the first notions of infinite products and demonstrating the first non-trivial convergence of such,
3. Euler solving the Basel problem and linking the zeta function to the prime numbers (giving a new proof of the infinitude of primes),
4. Gauss and Eisenstein further using Euler's ideas and their own unique algebraic insights to understand primes in arithmetic progressions, and finally
5. Riemann taking the zeta function, putting it in the complex plane, revealing the unifying theme connecting the previous discoveries and making his own fundamentally new discoveries with the explicit formula.
And of course the development only accelerated from that point on.
1. Newton and the Bernoulli family developing the theory of infinite series and connecting them to discrete sequences,
2. Wallis developing the first notions of infinite products and demonstrating the first non-trivial convergence of such,
3. Euler solving the Basel problem and linking the zeta function to the prime numbers (giving a new proof of the infinitude of primes),
4. Gauss and Eisenstein further using Euler's ideas and their own unique algebraic insights to understand primes in arithmetic progressions, and finally
5. Riemann taking the zeta function, putting it in the complex plane, revealing the unifying theme connecting the previous discoveries and making his own fundamentally new discoveries with the explicit formula.
And of course the development only accelerated from that point on.