THE MATHEMATICS of GAUSS Introduction Carl Friedrich Gauss
THE MATHEMATICS OF GAUSS DAVID SAVITT Introduction Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on April 30, 1777, in Brunswick, Germany, the son of Gebhard Dietrich Gauss, a bricklayer, and Dorothea Emerenzia Gauss. Carl Friedrich's mathematical talents showed themselves early: when he was three years old, he found an error in his father's payroll calculations. At the age of seven, he entered St. Katharine's Volksschule, where he was taught by J.G. BÄuttner. The most famous incident from Gauss's youth took place when BÄuttnerassigned to his class the task of summing the numbers from 1 to 100. While the other pupils busied themselves with the task, Gauss almost immediately wrote an answer on his tablet and handed it in. BÄuttner,at ¯rst skeptical, found that Gauss's solution was completely correct. Gauss explained himself: he had noticed that 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, and so on, so that 1 + ¢ ¢ ¢ + 100 = 50 ¢ 101 = 5050. Gauss quickly outpaced what he could be taught at the Katharineum, and began to be tutored privately in mathematics by a neighbor, Johann Bartels, who himself would later become a professor of mathematics. At the age of 14, Gauss came to the attention of the Duke of Brunswick: the Duchess saw Gauss reading in the palace yard one day, and was much impressed that Gauss understood what he was reading. When Gauss entered the Collegium Carolinum in 1792, the Duke paid his tuition. At the Collegium, Gauss studied the works of Newton, Euler, and Lagrange. His investigations on the distribution of primes in 1792 or 1793 give an early indication of his interest in number theory.
[Show full text]