直接の証明
左辺を
、右辺を
と置き、まず、右辺が疑二重周期を持つことを示す。


により
であるから、右辺の零点は



に限られる。一方、左辺は

- ;\tau )&=\sum _{n=-\infty }^{\infty }{e^{{\pi }i{\tau }n^{2}+2{\pi }in(v+\tau )}}\\&=\sum _{n=-\infty }^{\infty }{e^{{\pi }i{\tau }(n+1)^{2}-{\pi }i{\tau }+2{\pi }i(n+1)v-2{\pi }iv}}\\&=\sum _{n=-\infty }^{\infty }{e^{{\pi }i{\tau }n^{2}-{\pi }i{\tau }+2{\pi }inv-2{\pi }iv}}\\&=e^{-{\pi }i\tau }e^{-2{\pi }i{v}}\vartheta (v;\tau )\\\end{aligned}}}


であるから、右辺と同じ準二重周期を持ち、少なくとも右辺が零点を持つところに悉く零点を持つ。従って、リウヴィルの定理により、

は
に依存しない。


分子の級数においてnが奇数の項は正負で打ち消しあうから2nをnに置き換える。

は
に依存しないから

であり、
は
にも依存しない定数である。
として
を得る。結局、両辺は等しい。
ヤコビの原証明
Jacobi (1829)の原証明は冪級数の操作のみを用いている。まず

とおく。ヤコビの三重積は
であらわされる。
まず
について、

より

が成り立つ。そこで

とおくと

より

つまり

が成り立つ。この漸化式を解くと

が得られる。
次に
について、

が成り立つ。そこで

とおくと

であるが

より

つまり

が成り立つ。この漸化式を解くと

が得られる。
さて、ヤコビの三重積の冪級数展開を得たいが、代わりに
の冪級数展開について考える。

より
を冪級数展開したときの
および
の係数は共に

に一致するが、これは、上記の
の展開より

に一致する。よって

が成り立つ。