Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
Born on April 30, 1777 was the "prince of mathematicians," the "Archimedes of the nineteenth century". He was born in Brunswick, Duchy of Brunswick (which is now called Germany). Gauss was always mesmerized by mathematical ideas and had a premature obsession for numbers.
Gauss was born into a lower - class family. His mother, Dorothea Bentze, was the semiliterate daughter of a stonemason and worked as a maid. His father, Gebhard Dietrich, was a poorly - educated foreman, gardener, laborer of different trades, and an assistant to a merchant and a treasurer of a small insurance fund.
Johann taught himself to read by the age of three. His future was planned out for him, he was to follow his father and learn a trade. In 1788, when Gauss was in elementary school, his intelligence for mathematics was first discovered. He amazed his teachers when he added up in his head all the whole numbers from 1 to 100.
Title page of Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
Oil painting of Carl Friedrich Gauss by G. Bierman...
English: Carl Friedrich Gauss on his deathbad, 185...Büttner, the teacher who took most interest in Gauss, had told The Duke of Brunswick, Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand, about the intelligent child. The Duke sponsored Johann in 1791 so he could pursue his education. In 1792, he enrolled in Collegium Carolinum. In 1795 he entered Gottingham University, which he left without a diploma and decided to graduate back at Collegium Carolinum in 1799.
During the summer on 1801, twenty-four year old Gauss published his book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, which is considered one of the greatest mathematical pieces of all time. He created the Ramsden eyepiece, which is used in setting a telescope to a plane - reflecting surface. He produced the Gauss Hypergeometric equations and formulas, the Heptadecagon, Error functions, Interpolation formulae, the Gauss-Jordon Elimination, as well as his own theorem. He produced Gaussian Distribution, Elimination, Function, Image...