Abraham Jakub Stern, son of Jakub, was born in 1786 in Hrubieszów to a poor Jewish family. While working in this town as a watchmaker, he was also involved in the construction of machines based on the drive of gears, commonly used in clock mechanisms. This creative, non-profit work was very important to him, and he described it as his civic duty.

In 1811 he wrote to Stanisław Staszic (1755-1826), the president of the Society of Friends of Sciences (TPN), asking for financial support for further work on his calculating machine. The device that combined adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and squaring was positively evaluated by the Society. Abraham Stern was subsidized for further work on the invention and was granted an annual salary of PLN 1,200. He moved with his family to Warsaw, where he studied and participated in the works of the Society of Friends of Sciences. He opinioned inventions and continued design work developing a square root calculator as well as another calculating device. Unfortunately, those inventions do no longer exist today.

Stern also created models of agricultural machines and a geodetic instrument, he translated works from Hebrew and Italian. He was active for the benefit of the Jewish community, initiating the establishment of the Warsaw Rabbinical School, and working as its principal. The facility was opened in 1826.

He was a well-known and respected person in Warsaw he liked. Despite financial difficulties, he refused to accept a position at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin because, as he wrote, he did not want to leave his native country. His son-in-law was Chaim Zelig Słonimski, grandfather of the poet and writer Antoni Słonimski.

Stern died on February 2, 1842, and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Bródno, Warsaw.