Karl Friedrich Gauss

1777-1855

 

Background

Karl Friedrich Gauss was born in Brunswick, Germany in 1777.? Gauss studied mathematics at the University of Gottingen from 1795 to 1798.? Gauss was something of a child prodigy, as his genius was discovered when at age 3, he pointed out an error in his father?s business? payroll and quickly corrected it.? According to another account of Gauss? childhood, a teacher once told him to find the sum of the counting numbers from 1 to 100 to keep him busy and Gauss responded within seconds with, ?5050.??

 

While Gauss made countless contributions to applied mathematics, especially magnetism and electricity, his first love was pure mathematics.? Gauss referred to mathematics as ?the queen of the sciences,? and to arithmetic as ?the queen of mathematics.?? Gauss? other interests included astronomy, geodesy, and statistics.

 

Many mathematics historians consider Gauss? influence on mathematics in the nineteenth century as Newton?s had been to science in the eighteenth century.

 

Contributions to Mathematics in General

?       Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801)

A book regarded today as one of the most influential books ever written on number theory

 

?       Proved Fundamental Theorem of Algebra and Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic

 

?       Least Squares Fitting

 

See http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Gauss.html

 

Contributions to Non-Euclidean Geometry

Gauss? Discovery

Gauss "discovered" non-Euclidean geometry at the age of 15.  Around 1815, a 13-year old math prodigy named Janos Bolyai has mastered differential and integral calculus.  Bolyai's father wrote a letter to Gauss begging for his son to be his apprentice mathematician.  Although Gauss never replied to his father's request, about 15 years later, Gauss received what is known at the "Tentamen" from Bolyai.  Coincidentally, it was on non-Euclidean geometry, with the same types of thoughts that Gauss had about the subject.  Gauss was impressed and replied back to Bolyai and his father, praising the young man's work.  Disappointingly, Gauss did not publicize the work because according to Gauss he had "a great antipathy against being drawn into any sort of polemic."  Gauss did not feel the world was ready for what he was doing, and not only that, he was a perfectionist; he worked on non-Euclidean geometry for nearly 35 years when Bolyai's father sent him his work.  Gauss was also preoccupied in other branches of math, astronomy, geodesy, and physics.  The few results that he did record on non-Euclidean geometry were found among his private papers after his death.  Gauss is considered "the prince of mathematics"  because his work was so wide ranged.

-Esther Landin

 

The Scandal of Geometry

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ma2nsp/Non-Euclid.htm

 

Quotes from Gauss

On his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry,

?The assumption that (in a triangle) the sum of the three angles is less than 180 degrees leads us to a curious geometry, quite different from ours, but thoroughly consistent, which I have developed to my entire satisfaction.?

 

 

On being informed that his wife was dying,

?Ask her to wait a moment ? I am almost done.?