Carl Friedrich Gauss

Revision as of 07:40, 21 August 2009 by JBL (talk | contribs)

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and scientist who lived from April 30, 1777 to February 23, 1855.

Among his many accomplishments were quickly calculating the sum of the integers from 1 to 100 in the first grade and proving that a 17-gon (or any $n$-gon where $n$ is a Fermat prime) is constructible. He even asked for a 17-gon to be put on his tombstone.

Gauss has several mathematical and physics terms named after him including the Gaussian integers, Gaussian distributions, and Gauss's Law.

This article is a stub. Help us out by expanding it.