Carl Friedrich Gauss is one of history's most influential mathematicians. He played a major role in the development of mathematics which he called 'the Queen of all Sciences' and made it an interesting subject for many around the world.
His extraordinary mathematical capability is widely popularised through his famous anecdotes. Gauss remains a person to be admired and respected by every student who has learnt mathematics or admired it beauty...
''Mathematics is the queen of all sciences and arithmetic is the queen of mathematics''
-Carl Gauss
Carl Gauss was a young prodigy. He showed extraordinary capability in analysing things and conceiving the idea hidden in them. As one story goes,
Gauss was sitting beside his father who was working on a sum associated with finances. Gauss immediately found an error in his father's calculation and corrected him. You should appreciate the fact that this incident happened when he was just three years old! This clearly explains his sharp intellect.
Carl Gauss became an accomplished mathematician who made phenomenal contributions to many fields of mathematics especially arithmetic. He is best known for his famous Geodetic survey which helped him to arrive at important assumptions in the field of astronomy moreover he is credited with the discovery of heliotrope, an instrument which he used to calculate large distances during his land survey.
Gauss was deeply influenced by Leonhard Euler, who himself was a proficient mathematician. His admiration for Euler can be inferred from his following words.
''The study of Euler's work will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, an nothing else can replace it''
One of the most iconic anecdotes associated with Gauss happened when he was at school and I am sure that your mathematics teacher might have narrated this interesting tale in your class. If not, then here you are,
Gauss and his classmates were attending the maths class. His teacher was called on to do some urgent work and so in order to engage the students for a brief period, the teacher gave them a humungous task, to calculate the sum of all numbers starting from 1 to 100. The teacher was quite confident that none of the students in his class would be able to accomplish this task. He was about to leave the class for his work when Gauss stood up and proclaimed that he had found the answer.
The teacher didn't believe Gauss and asked him to recheck the answer once again but Gauss stood there, confident. The teacher then asked Gauss to make sure that he didn't make any mistakes in the sums and rushed out at once.
He came back after his work to see Gauss sitting with the same solution he had calculated some time ago. He called Gauss and checked his answer, good gracious!, the answer was absolutely correct, 5050. The teacher was so surprised at the sharp witted Gauss and asked him to explain how he had done it, Gauss explained as follows,
Sir, this was a very easy question 😄 and I wonder why you gave me a question which you should have given to a student of a lower grade (or class).
Look, carry out pairwise addition from opposite sides and you will get this,
1+100=101
2+99=101
3+98=101..........
This means the sum is always 101 and therefore the total sum has to be 5050 i.e. (50✕101)
Gauss was very modest about his achievements and I included these lines just for the pleasure of the reader. He was not overconfident, he never boasted about what he did, had a creative mind, was a simplifier (he explained each of his math concepts with utter brilliance that it was impossible for anyone to disprove it) and above all had a lot of common sense, the qualities that a true mathematician should have to excel in his field of endeavor.
Gauss is famously known for his greatest mathematical work, Disquisitiones Arithmaticae, in this book Gauss summarised many of his results on number theory which we use widely in many fields in mathematics and other sciences.
We have all learnt Newton's Law of Gravitation, however it is very difficult to work on this law. I remember multiplying large values to calculate the 'force' using Newton's Law.
Gauss provided a new law, known as Gauss's Law of Gravitation which is more convenient than Newton's Law. However it should be noted that both these laws are equally important in science and occupy the same status.
''It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not the possession of but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment''
-Gauss
As always please share your valuable feedback in the comments section.😊👍
Picture credits:
Wikipedia- Portrait of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Leonhard Euler.
Information credits:
Wikipedia- Some information regarding anecdotes associated with Gauss and his quotes.
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