From the outside, Gauss' life was very simple. Having brought up in an austere childhood in a poor and uneducated family he showed extraordinary precocity. He received a stipend from the duke of Brunswick starting at the age of 14 which allowed him to devote his time to his studies for 16 years. Before his 25th birthday, he was already famous for his work in mathematics and astronomy. When he became 30 he went to Göttingen to become director of the observatory. He rarely left the city except on scientific business. From there, he worked for 47 years until his death at almost 78. In contrast to his external simplicity, Gauss' personal life was tragic and complicated. Due to the French Revolution, Napoleonic period and the democratic revolutions in Germany, he suffered from political turmoil and financial insecurity. He found no fellow mathematical collaborators and worked alone for most of his life. An unsympathetic father, the early death of his first wife, the poor health of his second wife, and terrible relations with his sons denied him a family sanctuary until late in life.

Even with all of these troubles, Gauss kept an amazingly rich scientific activity. An early passion for numbers and calculations extended first to the theory of numbers, to algebra, analysis, geometry, probability, and the theory of errors. At the same time, he carried on intensive empirical and theoretical research in many branches of science, including observational astronomy, celestial mechanics, surveying, geodesy, capillarity, geomagnetism, electromagnetism, mechanism optics, actuarial science. His publications, abundant correspondence, notes, and manuscripts show him to have been one of the greatest scientific virtuosos of all time.