Carl gauss biography book

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“Gaussian” as a modifier has been applied to a number of mathematical terms, and “gauss” is the universal unit for the intensity of magnetic force.

Tord Hall's biography concisely presents the outer events of Gauss's life, but the emphasis is, as it should be, on the inner core of that life—the mathematical creations.

In addition, because of his Olympian reserve and standoffishness from his colleagues, he was disciplined to present his discoveries informally; he chose instead to reveal them only when they were embodied in the form of perfectly developed papers, which can be regarded as integral works of art, finished and unalterable.

This disposition prevented Gauss from adding still more illustrious discoveries to his credit: for besides those presented in the large body of his formal papers, a study of his journal and other posthumous documents reveals that he had achieved (but did not publish, because he had not developed the work up to his high standards of completeness and rigor) some of the most important results later obtained by Abel, Cauchy, Jacobi, and others.

The topics so discussed include (among others) the fundamental theorem of algebra, the 17-gon, geodesic triangulation and Gaussian curvature, non-Euclidean geometry, elliptic functions, arithmetic residues, the determination of the orbit of Ceres, and the first workable telegraph, constructed in collaboration with Wilhelm Weber.