Who is karl gauss

At the age of 21, Gauss composed his magnum opus Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. This work of his fundamentally altered the landscape of number theory in the years that followed till this day.

The Duke of Brunswick found his work impressive and decided to send him to the Collegium Carolinum. During his studies he independently worked out several theorems in a new light. He made a groundbreaking discovery in that polygon can be constructed by the product of distinct Fermat primes and a power of two.

Turns out it was a colossal discovery in the field of mathematics which rendered Gauss to opt mathematics as his main career instead of philology. He even wished that his tombstone is to be inscribed with heptadecagon which was declined by stonemason.

Eventually gauss was adopted as the term used in the cgs centimeter-gram-second system of units to describe a unit of magnetic flux density or magnetic induction.

Both men also developed more sensitive measuring instruments. In , Gauss published his description of a device that he called a magnometer , more commonly known today as a magnetometer. Weber later developed the electrodynamometer , which used the interacting magnetic fields of two coils to measure electric current and voltage.

He did continue to correspond with other scientists for many years, however, often pointing out flaws in their work or intimating that he had made the same discovery earlier. Many of his views and calculations were not discovered until his notes and other unpublished writings were perused after his death. In his personal life, Gauss faced problems less easily solved than his mathematical challenges. He outlived two wives and two of his six children, and was reportedly afflicted with depression at times.

After the death of his second wife in , his daughter by her took over the household duties. She lived with her father and looked after him until he passed away on February 23, Carl Friedrich Gauss. Category: Pioneers. Gauss summarised his views on the pursuit of knowledge in a letter dated September 2, , as follows:. It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

She took over the household and cared for him and his family. The mathematician was made a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and was also elected a foreign honourary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his life, Gauss had excellent health and a strong constitution. He was never seriously ill, but in the last two years, he suffered from insomnia and several other ailments due to his age. Highly developed convolutions were also found, which in the early 20th century was suggested as an explanation of his genius.

In his father died, and a year later Gauss's wife Johanna died after giving birth to their second son, who was to die soon after her. Gauss was shattered and wrote to Olbers asking him to give him a home for a few weeks, to gather new strength in the arms of your friendship - strength for a life which is only valuable because it belongs to my three small children.

Gauss was married for a second time the next year, to Minna the best friend of Johanna, and although they had three children, this marriage seemed to be one of convenience for Gauss. Gauss's work never seemed to suffer from his personal tragedy. In the first volume he discussed differential equations , conic sections and elliptic orbits, while in the second volume, the main part of the work, he showed how to estimate and then to refine the estimation of a planet's orbit.

Gauss's contributions to theoretical astronomy stopped after , although he went on making observations until the age of Much of Gauss's time was spent on a new observatory, completed in , but he still found the time to work on other subjects.

The latter work was inspired by geodesic problems and was principally concerned with potential theory. In fact, Gauss found himself more and more interested in geodesy in the s. Gauss had been asked in to carry out a geodesic survey of the state of Hanover to link up with the existing Danish grid. Gauss was pleased to accept and took personal charge of the survey, making measurements during the day and reducing them at night, using his extraordinary mental capacity for calculations.

He regularly wrote to Schumacher, Olbers and Bessel , reporting on his progress and discussing problems. Because of the survey, Gauss invented the heliotrope which worked by reflecting the Sun's rays using a design of mirrors and a small telescope.

However, inaccurate base lines were used for the survey and an unsatisfactory network of triangles. Gauss often wondered if he would have been better advised to have pursued some other occupation but he published over 70 papers between and From the early s Gauss had an interest in the question of the possible existence of a non-Euclidean geometry.

He discussed this topic at length with Farkas Bolyai and in his correspondence with Gerling and Schumacher. In a book review in he discussed proofs which deduced the axiom of parallels from the other Euclidean axioms, suggesting that he believed in the existence of non-Euclidean geometry, although he was rather vague.

Gauss confided in Schumacher, telling him that he believed his reputation would suffer if he admitted in public that he believed in the existence of such a geometry. Gauss replied to praise it would mean to praise myself.

Again, a decade later, when he was informed of Lobachevsky 's work on the subject, he praised its "genuinely geometric" character, while in a letter to Schumacher in , states that he had the same convictions for 54 years indicating that he had known of the existence of a non-Euclidean geometry since he was 15 years of age this seems unlikely.

Gauss had a major interest in differential geometry , and published many papers on the subject. In fact, this paper rose from his geodesic interests, but it contained such geometrical ideas as Gaussian curvature. The period - was a particularly distressing time for Gauss. He took in his sick mother in , who stayed until her death in , while he was arguing with his wife and her family about whether they should go to Berlin.

He had been offered a position at Berlin University and Minna and her family were keen to move there. In Gauss's second wife died after a long illness.