Gauss,+Carl

Carl Gauss

Biography: Carl Gauss was born on April 30th 1777 in Braunschweig Germany. Carl was an only child to poor working-class parents. He was a German mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was considered the greatest mathematician of his time. His ideas had a big influence in almost all areas of mathematics. He started elementary school when he was seven years old. His teacher noticed the potential almost immediately. For higher education he went to Caroline collage and university of Gottingen. The Duke of Gottingen died in 1806, Gauss took over becoming the director of astronomical observatory. He kept this roll till death. Gauss made most of his important discoveries before he was 20 years old. He was careful and rigorous about all his work in any field that he was in, definitely a perfectionist. He had a total of 6 kids between his 2 wives. After his first wife died along with one of his children soon after, this caused Gauss to become depressed. He never truly recovered from. His second wife died in 1831 after a long illness. His mother was also ill so she moved in with him and his family. She lived with them until her death in 1839. Carl passed away on February 23, 1855. He was 77 years old.

Contributions made to mathematics: Everyone knew Carl was talented when he told his father that his payroll calculations were incorrect, Carl was three years old when he told his father this. His best work with mathematics was the principal of least squares. Least squares are a mathematical concept that is used statistical analysis like regression. He provided the fundamental theorem of algebra. Another one of his big accomplishments was that he brought about the acceptance of imaginary numbers (the square root of negative numbers). He did this by showing how to represent complex numbers (combinations of real and imaginary numbers), as points on a plane. In 1792 Carl summed the integers from 1 to 100 almost instantly by spotting that the sum was 50 pairs of numbers, each pair summing to 101. During his life time he made many discoveries that were not credited to him because he insisted on complete proof of any result before he would publish it. So Carl Gauss did more for mathematics than people know.

sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/gauss.shtml

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0820346.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gauss.html

Grabiner, Judith. "Gauss,Carl Friedrich." The World Book Encyclopedia. 2006 ed.