Carl Friedrich Gauss.

(1777-1855)

     The great German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss was born in 1777 in small German town Brunswick. Little Carl Friedrich found out his striking abilities to count very early. Once at school, a teacher gave boys the sum of the numbers 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 100. Gauss gave the teacher his slate with the right answer at once; he noticed, that numbers, situated at the equal distance from the end and beggining gave the same number when added to each other:

1 + 100 = 2 + 99 = 3+ 98 = ... = 50 + 51 = 101.

     But there are only 50 such pairs of numbers, consequently, unknown sum is equal to 101· 50 = 5050.

     In 1795 Gauss joint the Göttingen University. At first he attended only the lectures in mathematics and philology, not knowing what to choose. To devote himself to mathematics he decide only after his famous discovery - proving of the possibility of construction of a regular 17-gon by ruler and compasses.

     From this moment begins the heroic period of Gauss' creative work. During the next five years the most of his greatest discoveries in the number theory, algebra and calculus. On the 8-th of the April, in 1796 he carried out the proof of one of the fundamental laws of the number theiry which was discovered by L. Euler. But Euler, himself, couldn't prove it, when Gauss gave 8 different proofs!

     In 1797 Gauss was awarded doctor's degree.

     In 1801 Gauss gathered all his works of the number theory in remarkable composition "Arithmetical investigatios". This book put him in the same raw with such mathematitions, as P. Fermat and L. Euler.

     Works in astronomy and phisics brought 24-years-old Gauss the wide fame. In 1832 - 1833 he built electromagnetic observatory in Göttingen. He also founded the first magnetic observatory in the world.

     Gauss hadn't many private pupils, but he is often called the teacher of the mathematitiocions all over the world. Notions and methods, invented by him are still actively used by mathematicians and phisicions.

     Gauss died in 1855.

     See Gaus theorem and fundamental theorem of arithmetics.