Friedrich Gauss - German Mathematician

Friedrich Gauss was a famous german mathematician who is responsible for many fields of math. Some including number theory, algebra, statistic analysis, and so much more. Gauss was born on April 10, 1777 in Brunswick in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel that is now known as Lower Saxony, Germany, and sadly died on February 23, 1855. Gauss is considered to be one of the most influential mathematicians that ever lived. Because of all of his contributions he is considered as the Princeps mathematicorum, which means the prince of mathematics.

I think the reason he was so good at math was because he had such a jumpstart into it. There are many great stories that are told about Gauss’s early life. One of my favorites being the one where he proved his teacher wrong. The story states that one day he misbehaved in class and as a form of punishment his teacher, J.P Buttens, had told him to add a list of integers in arithmetic progression. Gauss answered this with in seconds. Obviously the teacher being angry sent him to the principal's office and the principal had asked him how he did it. Gauss's method was to realize that pairwise addition of terms from opposite ends of the list held identical intermediate sums. He was a math prodigy from the start. This is why I find him so interesting.

Gauss was born to low class working parents. Gauss In 1788 Gauss began his education at the Gymnasium with the help of Büttner and Bartels. In 1795 Gauss left Brunswick to study at Göttingen University. Gauss left Göttingen in 1798 without a diploma, but it was okay because he had made a discovery that was going to change his life. He discovered the construction of a regular 17-gon by ruler and compasses. This was a major advance in this field and was even published as Section VII of Gauss's famous work, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.

One of the biggest things Gauss had to overcome was his depression which he never really surpassed. His

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