50 years after the death of towering genius, Leibniz in Germany, a child was born in Brunswick who was known as ‘the prince of mathematics’. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on April 30, 1777. Neither of his parents had much education, but Gauss had tended to trace his genius to his mother rather than his father. Gauss had shown an extraordinary ability in counting and arithmetic form in an early age. At 7 when he started attending school, teachers recognised his abilities and persuaded his parents to allow him to proceed to the local gymnasium where he learnt Latin along with the official High German. Gauss was strongly attached to philological studies and even more strongly to mathematics. He continued his study at the Brunswick Collegium Carolinum, and when he was 15, he became one of the best at this progressive science-oriented institution. One of the works he studied was Newton’s Principia. By the age of 18 Gauss left for the University of Gottingen in Hanover to study in more science-oriented institution. After leaving Gottingen, he submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Helmstedt, which was accepted ‘in absentia’.
Gauss’s first major publication, Arithmetical investigations, had impressed many mathematicians who could understand it. This was the first attempt to organise the number theory. He was also interested in astronomy and calculated the orbit of the asteroid Ceres from extremely limited observational data. In his personal life, Gauss married Johanna Osthoff, the first of his two wives on October 9, 1805 and had a son Joseph and a daughter Minna but Johanna died after giving to another son who didn’t survive more than a few months. Through his second marriage to Friderica Wilhelmine Waldeck, he fathered three more children, Eugene, Wilhelm and Therese. The oldest son Joseph acted as his father’s assistant for a while, then became a railway engineer later. The other two sons emigrated to North America after extended conflicts with their father. Gauss was the recipient of many academic and other honours, and later he was addressed as Geheimrat Gauss. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1804 and awarded the Copley Medal in 1838. In 1854 the Georgia Augusta celebrated his scientific achievements. Gauss carried on enormous scientific subjects. In mathematics the number theory came first and then extended to algebra, analysis, geometry, mechanics, celestial mechanics, probability, error theory and actuarial science. In pure and applied science his interests included observational astronomy, surveying, geodesy, capillarity, geomagnetism, electromagnetism, optics, and the design of scientific equipment. While Newton is regarded as a physicist first and only secondarily as a mathematician, in the case of Gauss it is the other way round. Gauss wrote over three hundred papers and many more unpublished notebooks which have been worked over by many generations. On February 23, 1855 the greatest German mathematician died in his sleep.
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