19Th Century Mathematics - Gauss

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)
19TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS - GAUSS

Carl Friedrich Gauss is sometimes referred to as the "Prince of Mathematicians" and the "greatest
mathematician since antiquity". He has had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and
science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians.
Gauss was a child prodigy. There are many anecdotes concerning his precocity as a child, and he made
first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager.
At just three years old, he corrected an error in his father payroll calculations, and he was looking after his
father’s accounts on a regular basis by the age of 5. At the age of 7, he is reported to have amazed his
teachers by summing the integers from 1 to 100 almost instantly (having quickly spotted that the sum was
actually 50 pairs of numbers, with each pair summing to 101, total 5,050). By the age of 12, he was alread
attending gymnasium and criticizing Euclid’s geometry.
Although his family was poor and

working class, Gauss' intellectual
abilities attracted the attention of
the Duke of Brunswick, who sent
him to the Collegium Carolinum at
15, and then to the prestigious
University of Göttingen (which he
attended from 1795 to 1798). It
was as a teenager attending
university that Gauss discovered
(or independently rediscovered)
several important theorems.
At 15, Gauss was the first to find

any kind of a pattern in the
occurrence of prime numbers, a
problem which had exercised the
Graphs of the density of prime numbers
minds of the best mathematicians since ancient times. Although the occurrence of prime numbers appear
to be almost competely random, Gauss approached the problem from a different angle by graphing the
incidence of primes as the
numbers increased. He noticed a
rough pattern or trend: as the
numbers increased by 10, the
probability of prime numbers
occurring reduced by a factor of
about 2 (e.g. there is a 1 in 4
chance of getting a prime in the
number from 1 to 100, a 1 in 6
chance of a prime in the numbers
from 1 to 1,000, a 1 in 8 chance
from 1 to 10,000, 1 in 10 from 1 to
100,000, etc). However, he was
quite aware that his method merely
yielded an approximation and, as
could not definitively prove his
findings, and kept them secret until 17-sided heptadecagon constructed by Gauss
much later in life.
In Gauss’s annus mirabilis of 1796,

just 19 years of age, he constructed a hitherto unknown regular seventeen-sided figure using only a ruler
and compass, a major advance in this field since the time of Greek mathematics, formulated his prime
number theorem on the distribution of prime numbers among the integers, and proved that every positive
integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers.
Although he made contributions in

almost all fields of mathematics,
number theory was always Gauss’
favourite area, and he asserted
that “mathematics is the queen of
the sciences, and the theory of
numbers is the queen of
mathematics”. An example of how
Gauss revolutionized number
theory can be seen in his work with
complex numbers (combinations of
real and imaginary numbers).
Gauss gave the first clear

exposition of complex numbers and
the investigation of functions of
complex variables in the early 19th
Century. Although imaginary
numbers involving i(the imaginary Representation of complex numbers
unit, equal to the square root of -1)
had been used since as early as
the 16th Century to solve equations
that could not be solved in any
other way, and despite Euler’s ground-breaking work on imaginary and complex numbers in the 18th
Century, there was still no clear picture of how imaginary numbers connected with real numbers until the
early 19th Century. Gauss was not the first to intepret complex numbers graphically (Jean-Robert Argand
produced his Argand diagrams in 1806, and the Dane Caspar Wessel had described similar ideas even
before the turn of the century), but Gauss was certainly responsible for popularizing the practice and also
formally introduced the standard notation a + bi for complex numbers. As a result, the theory of complex
numbers received a notable expansion, and its full potential began to be unleashed.
At the age of just 22, he proved what is now known as the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (although it
was not really about algebra). The theorem states that every non-constant single-variable polynomial ove
the complex numbers has at least
one root (although his initial proof
was not rigorous, he improved on it
later in life). What it also showed
was that the field of complex
numbers is algebraically "closed"
(unlike real numbers, where the
solution to a polynomial with real
co-efficients can yield a solution in
the complex number field).
Then, in 1801, at 24 years of age,

published his book “Disquisitiones
Arithmeticae”, which is regarded
today as one of the most influential
mathematics books ever written,
and which laid the foundations for
modern number theory. Among
many other things, the book
contained a clear presentation of
Gauss’ method of modular
arithmetic, and the first proof of the
law of quadratic reciprocity (first
conjectured by Euler and
Legendre).
For much of his life, Gauss also

retained a strong interest in Line of best fit by Gauss’ least squares method
theoretical astrononomy, and he
held the post of Director of the
astronomical observatory in
Göttingen for many years. When
the planetoid Ceres was in the process of being identified in the late 17th Century, Gauss made a predicti
of its position which varied greatly from the predictions of most other astronomers of the time. But, when
Ceres was finally discovered in 1801, it was almost exacly where Gauss had predicted. Although he did n
explain his methods at the time, this was one of the first applications of the least squares approximation
method, usually attributed to Gauss, although also claimed by the Frenchman Legendre. Gauss claimed t
have done the logarithmic calculations in his head.
As Gauss’ fame spread, though, and he became known throughout Europe as the go-to man for complex
mathematical questions, his character deteriorated and he became increasingly arrogant, bitter, dismissiv
and unpleasant, rather than just shy. There are many stories of the way in which Gauss had dismissed th
ideas of young mathematicians or, in some cases, claimed them as his own.
In the area of probability and
statistics, Gauss introduced what is
now known as Gaussian
distribution, the Gaussian function
and the Gaussian error curve. He
showed how probability could be
represented by a bell-shaped or
“normal” curve, which peaks
around the mean or expected value
and quickly falls off towards
plus/minus infinity, which is basic to
descriptions of statistically
distributed data.
He also made ths first systematic

study of modular arithmetic - using
integer division and the modulus -
which now has applications in
number theory, abstract algebra, Gaussian, or normal, probability curve
computer science, cryptography,
and even in visual and musical art.
While engaged on a rather banal

surveying job for the Royal House
Hanover in the years after 1818,
Gauss was also looking into the
shape of the Earth, and starting to
speculate on revolutionary ideas
like shape of space itself. This led
him to question one of the central
tenets of the whole of mathematics,
Euclidean geometry, which was
clearly premised on a flat, and not
curved, universe. He later claimed
have considered a non-Euclidean
geometry (in which Euclid's parallel
axiom, for example, does not
apply), which was internally
consistent and free of
contradiction, as early as 1800.
Unwilling to court controversy,
however, Gauss decided not to
pursue or publish any of his avant-
garde ideas in this area, leaving
the field open to Bolyai and
Lobachevsky, although he is still
considered by some to be a
pioneer of non-Euclidean Gaussian curvature
geometry.
The Hanover survey work also

fuelled Gauss' interest in differential geometry (a field of mathematics dealing with curves and surfaces)
and what has come to be known as Gaussian curvature (an intrinsic measure of curvature, dependent on
on how distances are measured on the surface, not on the way it is embedded in space). All in all, despite
the rather pedestrian nature of his employment, the responsibilities of caring for his sick mother and the
constant arguments with his wife Minna (who desperately wanted to move to Berlin), this was a very fruitf
period of his academic life, and he published over 70 papers between 1820 and 1830.
Gauss’ achievements were not limited to pure mathematics, however. During his surveying years, he
invented the heliotrope, an instrument that uses a mirror to reflect sunlight over great distances to mark
positions in a land survey. In later years, he collaborated with Wilhelm Weber on measurements of the
Earth's magnetic field, and invented the first electric telegraph. In recognition of his contributions to the
theory of electromagnetism, the international unit of magnetic induction is known as the gauss.

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Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

19TH CENTURY MATHEMATICS - GAUSS

Although his family was poor and

At 15, Gauss was the first to find

In Gauss’s annus mirabilis of 1796,

Although he made contributions in

Gauss gave the first clear

Then, in 1801, at 24 years of age,

For much of his life, Gauss also

He also made ths first systematic

While engaged on a rather banal

The Hanover survey work also

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