(Brunswick, now Germany, 1777 - Göttingen, id., 1855) Mathematician, physicist and astronomer German. Born into a poor family from a very early age, Karl Friedrich Gauss displayed a prodigious capacity for mathematics (according to legend, broke in three years his father when he was busy in the accounts of his business to tell a calculation error), to the point of being recommended to the Duke of Brunswick by their primary school teachers.
Duke gave financial assistance in high school and college, which was conducted at the University of Göttingen between 1795 and 1798. His doctoral thesis (1799) dealt with the fundamental theorem of algebra (which states that any algebraic equation has complex coefficients equally complex solutions), which Gauss proved.
In 1801 Gauss published a book aimed at a decisive influence in shaping the mathematics of the rest of the century, and particularly in the field the theory of numbers, arithmetic Disquisitions , whose numerous findings include: the first test of the quadratic reciprocity law, an algebraic solution to the problem of how to determine if a regular n-sided polygon can be constructed so geometric (unresolved since the time of Euclid), an exhaustive treatment of the theory of congruent numbers, and many results with numbers and complex functions (which would return to in 1831, describing exactly how to develop a complete theory them from their representations in the plane x, y) that marked the starting point of the modern theory of algebraic numbers. His fame as a mathematician
grew considerably this year, when he was able to predict accurately the orbital behavior of the asteroid Ceres, first sighted a few months before, for which employed the method of least squares, developed by himself in 1794 and even today the basis of modern computational tools astronomical estimate.
In 1807 he accepted the post of professor of astronomy at the Observatory of Göttingen, a post he remained all his life. Two years later, his first wife, whom he married in 1805, died giving birth to her third child later is remarried and had three more children. In those years Gauss matured his ideas on non-Euclidean geometry, ie the construction of a logically coherent dispense geometry of Euclid's postulate of parallels, but did not publish his findings, was ahead by more than thirty years later work Lobachewski and Bolyai.
Around 1820, held in the correct mathematical determination of the shape and size of the globe, Gauss developed many tools for the treatment of observational data, among which the error distribution curve that bears his name, also known by the appellation normal distribution and is one of the pillars of statistics.
Other results related to his interest in surveying are the invention of the heliotrope, and in the field of pure mathematics, its ideas on the study of the characteristics of curved surfaces, explicit in his general Disquisitiones circa curved surfaces ( 1828), laid the foundations of modern differential geometry. Also deserve your attention the phenomenon of magnetism, which culminated in the installation of the first electric telegraph (1833). Closely related to their investigations on this matter were the principles of the mathematical theory of potential he published in 1840.
Other areas of physics that Gauss studied were mechanical, acoustic, capillary and, in particular, optics, discipline on which the treaty published dioptric Research (1841), in which showed that a lens system is either always reducible to a single lens with the appropriate characteristics. It was perhaps the last major contribution of Karl Friedrich Gauss, a scientist whose depth of analysis, breadth of interest and rigor of treatment in life earned him the nickname "prince of mathematicians".
