Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, born 30 April 1777, was a German mathematician. Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum (Latin for "the Prince of Mathematicians") Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians.

Gauss developed the prime number theorem, which gives a good understanding of how prime numbers are distributed among integers. He also discovered that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers. On October first he published a result on the number of solutions of polynomials with coefficients in finite fields, which ultimately led to the Weil conjectures 150 years later. Gauss also made important contributions to number theory with his 1801 book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (Latin for Arithmetical Investigations), which contained a clean presentation of modular arithmetic and the first proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity. Gauss is also responsible for the notion of the Gaussian curvature which is used in differential geometry. In 1835 Gauss did research in the field of physics where he developed Gauss's Law, also known as Gauss's flux theorem. It relates the distribution of electric charge to the resulting electric field, stating that the electric flux through any closed surface is proportional to the enclosed electric charge.

Gauss spent the years from 1845 to 1851 updating the Göttingen University widow's fund. This work gave him practical experience in financial matters, and he went on to make his fortune through shrewd investments in bonds issued by private companies.

Gauss died in Göttingen, Hannover (now part of Lower Saxony, Germany) in 1855 and is interred in the cemetery Albanifriedhof there. Two individuals gave eulogies at his funeral, Gauss's son-in-law Heinrich Ewald and Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, who was Gauss's close friend and biographer. His brain was preserved and was studied by Rudolf Wagner who found its mass to be 1,492 grams and the cerebral area equal to 219,588 square millimeters.