Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) - German mathematician, mechanic, physicist, astronomer and surveyor. One of the greatest mathematicians in the history of mankind, who is called "the king of mathematicians".
Laureate of the Copley Medal, foreign member of the Swedish and St. Petersburg Academies of Sciences, the English Royal Society.
There are many interesting facts in Gauss's biography, which we will discuss in this article.
So, before you is the biography of Karl Gauss.
Gauss biography
Karl Gauss was born on April 30, 1777 in the German city of Göttingen. He grew up and was brought up in a simple, illiterate family.
The mathematician's father, Gebhard Dietrich Gauss, worked as a gardener and bricklayer, and his mother, Dorothea Benz, was the daughter of a builder.
Childhood and youth
Karl Gauss's extraordinary abilities began to appear at an early age. When the child was barely 3 years old, he had already mastered reading and writing.
An interesting fact is that at the age of 3, Karl corrected his father's mistakes when he subtracted or added numbers.
The boy performed various calculations in his mind with amazing ease, without resorting to counting and other devices.
Over time, Martin Bartels became Gauss's teacher, who would later teach Nikolai Lobachevsky. He immediately discerned unprecedented talent in the child and was able to procure him a scholarship.
Thanks to this, Karl managed to graduate from the college where he studied in the period 1792-1795.
At that time, the biography of the young man was interested not only in mathematics, but also in literature, reading English and French works in the original. In addition, he perfectly knew Latin, in which he wrote many of his works.
In his student years, Karl Gauss deeply researched the works of Newton, Euler and Lagrange. Even then, he was able to prove the law of reciprocity of quadratic residues, which even Euler could not do.
The guy also conducted studies in the field of "normal distribution of errors."
Scientific activity
In 1795 Karl entered the University of Göttingen, where he studied for 3 years. During this time, he made many different discoveries.
Gauss was able to construct a 17-gon with a compass and a ruler, and solved the problem of constructing regular polygons. At the same time, he was fond of elliptic functions, non-Euclidean geometry and quaternions, which he discovered 30 years before Hamilton.
During the writing of his works, Karl Gauss always expressed his thoughts in detail, avoiding abstract formulations and any understatement.
In 1801 the mathematician published his famous work Arithmetic Research. It covered a wide variety of areas of mathematics, including number theory.
At that time, Gauss became assistant professor at the University of Braunschweig, and later was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
At the age of 24, Karl developed an interest in astronomy. He studied celestial mechanics, the orbits of minor planets and their perturbations. He managed to find a way to determine the orbital elements from 3 complete observations.
Soon, Gauss was spoken about throughout Europe. Many states invited him to work, including Russia.
Karl was promoted to professor at Göttingen and was also appointed head of the Göttingen Observatory.
In 1809, the man completed a new work, entitled "Theory of the motion of heavenly bodies." In it, he described in detail the canonical theory of accounting for orbital perturbations.
The following year, Gauss was awarded the Paris Academy of Sciences Prize and the Royal Society of London Gold Medal. His calculations and theorems were used all over the world, calling him "the king of mathematics".
In the following years of his biography, Karl Gauss continued to make new discoveries. He studied hypergeometric series and brought out the first proof of the main theorem of algebra.
In 1820 Gauss surveyed Hanover using his innovative calculus methods. As a result, he became the founder of the highest geodesy. A new term has appeared in science - "Gaussian curvature".
Simultaneously, Karl laid the foundation for the development of differential geometry. In 1824 he was elected a foreign member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The following year, the mathematician discovers Gaussian complex integers, and later publishes another book "On a new general law of mechanics", which also contains many new theorems, concepts and fundamental calculations.
Over time, Karl Gauss met the young physicist Wilhelm Weber, with whom he studied electromagnetism. Scientists invent the electric telegraph and conduct a series of experiments.
In 1839, a 62-year-old man learned Russian. Many of his biographers claim that he mastered Russian in order to study the discoveries of Lobachevsky, about whom he spoke highly.
Later, Karl wrote 2 works - "General theory of the forces of attraction and repulsion, acting inversely proportional to the square of the distance" and "Diopter research".
Gauss's colleagues were amazed at his amazing performance and mathematical talent. In whatever field he worked, he was able to make discoveries everywhere and improve the already existing achievements.
Karl never published ideas that he thought were "raw" or unfinished. Due to the fact that he delayed the publication of many of his own discoveries, he was ahead of other scientists.
However, a number of scientific achievements of Karl Gauss made him an unattainable figure in the field of mathematics and many other exact sciences.
The unit for measuring magnetic induction in the CGS system, a system of units for measuring electromagnetic quantities, as well as one of the fundamental astronomical constants, the Gaussian constant, was named in his honor.
Personal life
Karl married at the age of 28 a girl named Johanna Osthof. In this marriage, three children were born, of which two survived - the son Joseph and the daughter Minna.
Gauss's wife died 4 years after the wedding, shortly after the birth of their third child.
A few months later, the scientist married Wilhelmina Waldeck, a friend of his late wife. In this union, three more children were born.
After 21 years of marriage, Wilhelmina died. Gauss had a hard time leaving his beloved, as a result of which he developed severe insomnia.
Death
Karl Gauss died on 23 February 1855 in Göttingen at the age of 77. For his enormous contribution to science, the monarch of Hanover, George 5, ordered the minting of a medal depicting the great mathematician.
Gauss Photos
