How did carl friedrich gauss die
Carl Friedrich Gauss
German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist (–)
"Gauss" redirects here. For other uses, see Gauss (disambiguation).
Carl Friedrich Gauss | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Christian Albrecht Jensen, (copy from Gottlieb Biermann, )[1] | |
| Born | Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss ()30 April Brunswick, Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Holy Roman Empire |
| Died | 23 February () (aged&#;77) Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover, German Confederation |
| Alma&#;mater | |
| Known&#;for | Full list |
| Spouses | Johanna Osthoff &#; &#; (m.&#;; died&#;)&#;Minna Waldeck &#; &#; (m.&#;; died&#;)&#; |
| Children | 6 |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics, Astronomy, Geodesy, Magnetism |
| Institutions | University of Göttingen |
| Thesis | Demonstratio nova&#;() |
| Doctoral advisor | Johann Friedrich Pfaff |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other&#;notable students | |
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (German: Gauß[kaʁlˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈɡaʊs]ⓘ;[2][3]Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April &#;&#; 23 February ) was a German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science.
He was director of the Göttingen Observatory and professor of astronomy from until his death in He is widely considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
While studying at the University of Göttingen, he propounded several mathematical theorems. Gauss completed his masterpiecesDisquisitiones Arithmeticae and Theoria motus corporum coelestium as a private scholar.
He gave the second and third complete proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra, made contributions to number theory, and developed the theories of binary and ternary quadratic forms.
Gauss was instrumental in the identification of Ceres as a dwarf planet. His work on the motion of planetoids disturbed by large planets led to the introduction of the Gaussian gravitational constant and the method of least squares, which he had discovered before Adrien-Marie Legendre published it.
Gauss was in charge of the extensive geodetic survey of the Kingdom of Hanover together with an arc measurement project from to ; he was one of the founders of geophysics and formulated the fundamental principles of magnetism. Fruits of his practical work were the inventions of the heliotrope in , a magnetometer in and – alongside Wilhelm Eduard Weber – the first electromagnetic telegraph in
Gauss was the first to discover and study non-Euclidean geometry, coining the term as well.
He further developed a fast Fourier transform some years before John Tukey and James Cooley.
Gauss refused to publish incomplete work and left several works to be edited posthumously. He believed that the act of learning, not possession of knowledge, provided the greatest enjoyment. Gauss confessed to disliking teaching, but some of his students became influential mathematicians, such as Richard Dedekind and Bernhard Riemann.
Biography
Youth and education
Gauss was born on 30 April in Brunswick in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (now in the German state of Lower Saxony). His family was of relatively low social status.[4] His father Gebhard Dietrich Gauss (–) worked variously as a butcher, bricklayer, gardener, and treasurer of a death-benefit fund.
Georg ohm His work has had an immense influence in many areas. View twelve larger pictures. Biography At the age of seven, Carl Friedrich Gauss started elementary school, and his potential was noticed almost immediately. At the academy Gauss independently discovered Bode's law, the binomial theorem and the arithmetic- geometric mean, as well as the law of quadratic reciprocity and the prime number theorem. His only known friend amongst the students was Farkas Bolyai.Gauss characterized his father as honourable and respected, but rough and dominating at home. He was experienced in writing and calculating, whereas his second wife Dorothea, Carl Friedrich's mother, was nearly illiterate. He had one elder brother from his father's first marriage.
Gauss was a child prodigy in mathematics. When the elementary teachers noticed his intellectual abilities, they brought him to the attention of the Duke of Brunswick who sent him to the local Collegium Carolinum,[a] which he attended from to with Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann as one of his teachers.[10] Thereafter the Duke granted him the resources for studies of mathematics, sciences, and classical languages at the University of Göttingen until [11] His professor in mathematics was Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, whom Gauss called "the leading mathematician among poets, and the leading poet among mathematicians" because of his epigrams.[b] Astronomy was taught by Karl Felix Seyffer, with whom Gauss stayed in correspondence after graduation;Olbers and Gauss mocked him in their correspondence.[14] On the other hand, he thought highly of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, his teacher of physics, and of Christian Gottlob Heyne, whose lectures in classics Gauss attended with pleasure.
Fellow students of this time were Johann Friedrich Benzenberg, Farkas Bolyai, and Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes.
He was likely a self-taught student in mathematics since he independently rediscovered several theorems.[10] He solved a geometrical problem that had occupied mathematicians since the Ancient Greeks when he determined in which regular polygons can be constructed by compass and straightedge.
This discovery ultimately led Gauss to choose mathematics instead of philology as a career. Gauss's mathematical diary, a collection of short remarks about his results from the years until , shows that many ideas for his mathematical magnum opus Disquisitiones Arithmeticae () date from this time.
Private scholar
Gauss graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in , not in Göttingen, as is sometimes stated,[c][17] but at the Duke of Brunswick's special request from the University of Helmstedt, the only state university of the duchy.
Johann Friedrich Pfaff assessed his doctoral thesis, and Gauss got the degree in absentia without further oral examination.[10] The Duke then granted him the cost of living as a private scholar in Brunswick.
Johann carl friedrich gauss biography summary example free
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss April 30, — February 23, was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism , astronomy , and optics. He is particularly known for the unit of magnetism that bears his name, and by a mathematical expression Gauss's Law that defines the character of a number of forces and physical phenomena such as electricity, magnetism, gravitation and heat flow. Gauss was a deeply religious man with strong convictions, but was tolerant of those with other views. His spiritual intuitions sprung from his love of truth and righteousness. He believed in a life beyond the grave.Gauss subsequently refused calls from the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Peterburg and Landshut University.[18][19] Later, the Duke promised him the foundation of an observatory in Brunswick in Architect Peter Joseph Krahe made preliminary designs, but one of Napoleon's wars cancelled those plans:[20] the Duke was killed in the battle of Jena in The duchy was abolished in the following year, and Gauss's financial support stopped.
When Gauss was calculating asteroid orbits in the first years of the century, he established contact with the astronomical community of Bremen and Lilienthal, especially Wilhelm Olbers, Karl Ludwig Harding, and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, as part of the informal group of astronomers known as the Celestial police. One of their aims was the discovery of further planets.
They assembled data on asteroids and comets as a basis for Gauss's research on their orbits, which he later published in his astronomical magnum opus Theoria motus corporum coelestium ().
Professor in Göttingen
In November , Gauss followed a call to the University of Göttingen, then an institution of the newly founded Kingdom of Westphalia under Jérôme Bonaparte, as full professor and director of the astronomical observatory, and kept the chair until his death in He was soon confronted with the demand for two thousand francs from the Westphalian government as a war contribution, which he could not afford to pay.
Both Olbers and Laplace wanted to help him with the payment, but Gauss refused their assistance. Finally, an anonymous person from Frankfurt, later discovered to be Prince-primateDalberg, paid the sum.
Gauss took on the directorate of the year-old observatory, founded in by Prince-electorGeorge II and built on a converted fortification tower, with usable, but partly out-of-date instruments.
The construction of a new observatory had been approved by Prince-elector George III in principle since , and the Westphalian government continued the planning, but Gauss could not move to his new place of work until September [19] He got new up-to-date instruments, including two meridian circles from Repsold and Reichenbach, and a heliometer from Fraunhofer.
The scientific activity of Gauss, besides pure mathematics, can be roughly divided into three periods: astronomy was the main focus in the first two decades of the 19th century, geodesy in the third decade, and physics, mainly magnetism, in the fourth decade.
Gauss made no secret of his aversion to giving academic lectures.[18][19] But from the start of his academic career at Göttingen, he continuously gave lectures until He often complained about the burdens of teaching, feeling that it was a waste of his time.
On the other hand, he occasionally described some students as talented.[18] Most of his lectures dealt with astronomy, geodesy, and applied mathematics,[33] and only three lectures on subjects of pure mathematics.[18][d] Some of Gauss's students went on to become renowned mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers: Moritz Cantor, Dedekind, Dirksen, Encke, Gould,[e]Heine, Klinkerfues, Kupffer, Listing, Möbius, Nicolai, Riemann, Ritter, Schering, Scherk, Schumacher, von Staudt, Stern, Ursin; as geoscientists Sartorius von Waltershausen, and Wappäus.[18]
Gauss did not write any textbook and disliked the popularization of scientific matters.
His only attempts at popularization were his works on the date of Easter (/) and the essay Erdmagnetismus und Magnetometer of [35] Gauss published his papers and books exclusively in Latin or German.[f][g] He wrote Latin in a classical style but used some customary modifications set by contemporary mathematicians.
In his inaugural lecture at Göttingen University from , Gauss claimed reliable observations and results attained only by a strong calculus as the sole tasks of astronomy.[33] At university, he was accompanied by a staff of other lecturers in his disciplines, who completed the educational program; these included the mathematician Thibaut with his lectures,[40] the physicist Mayer, known for his textbooks,[41] his successor Weber since , and in the observatory Harding, who took the main part of lectures in practical astronomy.
When the observatory was completed, Gauss took his living accommodation in the western wing of the new observatory and Harding in the eastern one.[19] They had once been on friendly terms, but over time they became alienated, possibly – as some biographers presume – because Gauss had wished the equal-ranked Harding to be no more than his assistant or observer.[19][h] Gauss used the new meridian circles nearly exclusively, and kept them away from Harding, except for some very seldom joint observations.
Brendel subdivides Gauss's astronomic activity chronologically into seven periods, of which the years since are taken as a "period of lower astronomical activity".
The new, well-equipped observatory did not work as effectively as other ones; Gauss's astronomical research had the character of a one-man enterprise without a long-time observation program, and the university established a place for an assistant only after Harding died in [42][i]
Nevertheless, Gauss twice refused the opportunity to solve the problem by accepting offers from Berlin in and to become a full member of the Prussian Academy without burdening lecturing duties, as well as from Leipzig University in and from Vienna University in , perhaps because of the family's difficult situation.[42] Gauss's salary was raised from Reichsthaler in to Reichsthaler in ,[19] and in his later years he was one of the best-paid professors of the university.[45]
When Gauss was asked for help by his colleague and friend Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel in , who was in trouble at Königsberg University because of his lack of an academic title, Gauss provided a doctorate honoris causa for Bessel from the Philosophy Faculty of Göttingen in March [j] Gauss gave another recommendation for an honorary degree for Sophie Germain but only shortly before her death, so she never received it.[48] He also gave successful support to the mathematician Gotthold Eisenstein in Berlin.[49]
Gauss was loyal to the House of Hanover.
Johann carl friedrich gauss biography summary example pdf He is widely considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Gauss completed his masterpieces Disquisitiones Arithmeticae and Theoria motus corporum coelestium as a private scholar. He gave the second and third complete proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra , made contributions to number theory , and developed the theories of binary and ternary quadratic forms. Gauss was instrumental in the identification of Ceres as a dwarf planet. His work on the motion of planetoids disturbed by large planets led to the introduction of the Gaussian gravitational constant and the method of least squares , which he had discovered before Adrien-Marie Legendre published it.After King William IV died in , the new Hanoverian King Ernest Augustus annulled the constitution. Seven professors, later known as the "Göttingen Seven", protested against this, among them his friend and collaborator Wilhelm Weber and Gauss's son-in-law Heinrich Ewald. All of them were dismissed, and three of them were expelled, but Ewald and Weber could stay in Göttingen.
Gauss was deeply affected by this quarrel but saw no possibility to help them.
Gauss took part in academic administration: three times he was elected as dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. Being entrusted with the widow's pension fund of the university, he dealt with actuarial science and wrote a report on the strategy for stabilizing the benefits.
He was appointed director of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Göttingen for nine years.
Gauss remained mentally active into his old age, even while suffering from gout and general unhappiness. On 23 February , he died of a heart attack in Göttingen; and was interred in the Albani Cemetery there. Heinrich Ewald, Gauss's son-in-law, and Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, Gauss's close friend and biographer, gave eulogies at his funeral.
Gauss was a successful investor and accumulated considerable wealth with stocks and securities, finally a value of more than thousand Thaler; after his death, about 18 thousand Thaler were found hidden in his rooms.
Gauss's brain
The day after Gauss's death his brain was removed, preserved, and studied by Rudolf Wagner, who found its mass to be slightly above average, at 1, grams (&#;lb).[54][55] Wagner's son Hermann, a geographer, estimated the cerebral area to be , square millimetres (&#;sq&#;in) in his doctoral thesis.[56] In , a neurobiologist at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen discovered that Gauss's brain had been mixed up soon after the first investigations, due to mislabelling, with that of the physician Conrad Heinrich Fuchs, who died in Göttingen a few months after Gauss.[57] A further investigation showed no remarkable anomalies in the brains of both persons.
Thus, all investigations on Gauss's brain until , except the first ones of Rudolf and Hermann Wagner, actually refer to the brain of Fuchs.[58]
Family
Gauss married Johanna Osthoff on 9 October in St. Catherine's church in Brunswick. They had two sons and one daughter: Joseph (–), Wilhelmina (–), and Louis (–).
Johanna died on 11 October , one month after the birth of Louis, who himself died a few months later. Gauss chose the first names of his children in honour of Giuseppe Piazzi, Wilhelm Olbers, and Karl Ludwig Harding, the discoverers of the first asteroids.
On 4 August , Gauss married Wilhelmine (Minna) Waldeck, a friend of his first wife, with whom he had three more children: Eugen (later Eugene) (–), Wilhelm (later William) (–), and Therese (–).
Johann carl friedrich gauss biography summary example Carl Friedrich Gauss — is often regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Born in Brunswick, in the Holy Roman Empire modern-day Germany , Gauss displayed extraordinary mathematical abilities from a young age. By the time he was seven, Gauss had stunned his teacher by finding the sum of the integers from 1 to in an instant—an anecdote that demonstrates his early inclination for mathematics. At the age of 14, Gauss caught the attention of the Duke of Brunswick, who provided him with a stipend to continue his education. By the time he completed his doctoral thesis at 22, Gauss had made several critical contributions to number theory, setting the stage for a lifetime of mathematical discovery.Minna Gauss died on 12 September after being seriously ill for more than a decade.[62] Therese then took over the household and cared for Gauss for the rest of his life; after her father's death, she married actor Constantin Staufenau. Her sister Wilhelmina married the orientalist Heinrich Ewald. Gauss's mother Dorothea lived in his house from until she died in [11]
The eldest son Joseph, while still a schoolboy, helped his father as an assistant during the survey campaign in the summer of After a short time at university, in Joseph joined the Hanoverian army and assisted in surveying again in In the s he was responsible for the enlargement of the survey network to the western parts of the kingdom.
With his geodetical qualifications, he left the service and engaged in the construction of the railway network as director of the Royal Hanoverian State Railways. In he studied the railroad system in the US for some months.[45][k]
Eugen left Göttingen in September and emigrated to the United States, where he joined the army for five years.
He then worked for the American Fur Company in the Midwest. Later, he moved to Missouri and became a successful businessman.[45] Wilhelm married a niece of the astronomer Bessel;[67] he then moved to Missouri, started as a farmer and became wealthy in the shoe business in St. Louis in later years.[68] Eugene and William have numerous descendants in America, but the Gauss descendants left in Germany all derive from Joseph, as the daughters had no children.[45]
Joseph Gauss
Sophie Gauss née Erythropel
Joseph's wifeWilhelmina Gauss
Heinrich Ewald
Wilhelmina's husbandEugen (Eugene) Gauss
Henrietta Gauss née Fawcett
Eugene's wifeWilhelm (Charles William) Gauss
Louisa Aletta Gauss née Fallenstein
William's wifeTherese Gauss
Constantin Staufenau
Therese's husband
Personality
Scholar
In the first two decades of the 19th century, Gauss was the only important mathematician in Germany, comparable to the leading French ones;[69] his Disquisitiones Arithmeticae was the first mathematical book from Germany to be translated into the French language.[70]
Gauss was "in front of the new development" with documented research since , his wealth of new ideas, and his rigour of demonstration.
Whereas previous mathematicians like Leonhard Euler let the readers take part in their reasoning for new ideas, including certain erroneous deviations from the correct path, Gauss however introduced a new style of direct and complete explanation that did not attempt to show the reader the author's train of thought.
Gauss was the first to restore that rigor of demonstration which we admire in the ancients and which had been forced unduly into the background by the exclusive interest of the preceding period in new developments.
—&#;Klein , p.&#;
But for himself, he propagated a quite different ideal, given in a letter to Farkas Bolyai as follows:[74]
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.
—&#;Dunnington , p.&#;
The posthumous papers, his scientific diary,[75] and short glosses in his own textbooks show that he empirically worked to a great extent.
He was a lifelong busy and enthusiastic calculator, who made his calculations with extraordinary rapidity, mostly without precise controlling, but checked the results by masterly estimation. Nevertheless, his calculations were not always free from mistakes. He coped with the enormous workload by using skillful tools. Gauss used a lot of mathematical tables, examined their exactness, and constructed new tables on various matters for personal use.[80] He developed new tools for effective calculation, for example the Gaussian elimination.[81] It has been taken as a curious feature of his working style that he carried out calculations with a high degree of precision much more than required, and prepared tables with more decimal places than ever requested for practical purposes.
Very likely, this method gave him a lot of material which he used in finding theorems in number theory.
Gauss refused to publish work that he did not consider complete and above criticism. This perfectionism was in keeping with the motto of his personal sealPauca sed Matura ("Few, but Ripe"). Many colleagues encouraged him to publicize new ideas and sometimes rebuked him if he hesitated too long, in their opinion.
Gauss defended himself, claiming that the initial discovery of ideas was easy, but preparing a presentable elaboration was a demanding matter for him, for either lack of time or "serenity of mind".[35] Nevertheless, he published many short communications of urgent content in various journals, but left a considerable literary estate, too.
Gauss referred to mathematics as "the queen of sciences" and arithmetics as "the queen of mathematics", and supposedly once espoused a belief in the necessity of immediately understanding Euler's identity as a benchmark pursuant to becoming a first-class mathematician.[87]
On certain occasions, Gauss claimed that the ideas of another scholar had already been in his possession previously.
Thus his concept of priority as "the first to discover, not the first to publish" differed from that of his scientific contemporaries.[88] In contrast to his perfectionism in presenting mathematical ideas, he was criticized for a negligent way of quoting. He justified himself with a very special view of correct quoting: if he gave references, then only in a quite complete way, with respect to the previous authors of importance, which no one should ignore; but quoting in this way needed knowledge of the history of science and more time than he wished to spend.[35]
Private man
Soon after Gauss's death, his friend Sartorius published the first biography (), written in a rather enthusiastic style.
Sartorius saw him as a serene and forward-striving man with childlike modesty, but also of "iron character" with an unshakeable strength of mind. Apart from his closer circle, others regarded him as reserved and unapproachable "like an Olympian sitting enthroned on the summit of science". His close contemporaries agreed that Gauss was a man of difficult character.
He often refused to accept compliments. His visitors were occasionally irritated by his grumpy behaviour, but a short time later his mood could change, and he would become a charming, open-minded host.[35] Gauss abominated polemic natures; together with his colleague Hausmann he opposed to a call for Justus Liebig on a university chair in Göttingen, "because he was always involved in some polemic."
Gauss's life was overshadowed by severe problems in his family.
When his first wife Johanna suddenly died shortly after the birth of their third child, he revealed the grief in a last letter to his dead wife in the style of an ancient threnody, the most personal surviving document of Gauss.[94] The situation worsened when tuberculosis ultimately destroyed the health of his second wife Minna over 13 years; both his daughters later suffered from the same disease.
Gauss himself gave only slight hints of his distress: in a letter to Bessel dated December he described himself as "the victim of the worst domestic sufferings".[35]
Because of his wife's illness, both younger sons were educated for some years in Celle, far from Göttingen. The military career of his elder son Joseph ended after more than two decades with the rank of a poorly paid first lieutenant, although he had acquired a considerable knowledge of geodesy.
He needed financial support from his father even after he was married.[45] The second son Eugen shared a good measure of his father's talent in computation and languages but had a vivacious and sometimes rebellious character. He wanted to study philology, whereas Gauss wanted him to become a lawyer. Having run up debts and caused a scandal in public,[97] Eugen suddenly left Göttingen under dramatic circumstances in September and emigrated via Bremen to the United States.
He wasted the little money he had taken to start, after which his father refused further financial support.[45] The youngest son Wilhelm wanted to qualify for agricultural administration, but had difficulties getting an appropriate education, and eventually emigrated as well. Only Gauss's youngest daughter Therese accompanied him in his last years of life.
Collecting numerical data on very different things, useful or useless, became a habit in his later years, for example, the number of paths from his home to certain places in Göttingen, or the number of living days of persons; he congratulated Humboldt in December for having reached the same age as Isaac Newton at his death, calculated in days.
Similar to his excellent knowledge of Latin he was also acquainted with modern languages.
At the age of 62, he began to teach himself Russian, very likely to understand scientific writings from Russia, among them those of Lobachevsky on non-Euclidean geometry.[99] Gauss read both classical and modern literature, and English and French works in the original languages.[m] His favorite English author was Walter Scott, his favorite German Jean Paul.
Gauss liked singing and went to concerts.
Sir david brewster: Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for his contributions to number theory, geometry, probability theory, geodesy, planetary astronomy, the theory of functions, and potential theory (including electromagnetism).
He was a busy newspaper reader; in his last years, he used to visit an academic press salon of the university every noon. Gauss did not care much for philosophy, and mocked the "splitting hairs of the so-called metaphysicians", by which he meant proponents of the contemporary school of Naturphilosophie.
Gauss had an "aristocratic and through and through conservative nature", with little respect for people's intelligence and morals, following the motto "mundus vult decipi".
He disliked Napoleon and his system, and all kinds of violence and revolution caused horror to him. Thus he condemned the methods of the Revolutions of , though he agreed with some of their aims, such as the idea of a unified Germany.[n]