242 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



which mathematics can actually become no less delusive 

 than ordinary, and even quite superficial, thinking. 



Gauss likewise developed in the same way the theory of 

 potential already mentioned under Laplace's achievements 

 and relating to the inverse square law; he developed this 

 considerably further. Tauca sed matura' (little but ripe) was 

 his motto, and all his publications do it the fullest honour, 

 although their number, when we count in the purely mathe- 

 matical work, is not less overwhelming than their contents. 

 Gauss' most profound work as an investigator of nature is 

 found in his researches on the intensity of the earth's mag- 

 netic force, reduced to absolute measure (1832). In this he 

 founded the system of absolute units which has become ever 

 more and more indispensable to scientific research, and 

 which was afterwards carried out for all electrical and mag- 

 netic quantities, among which also we must reckon the tech- 

 nical units everywhere used to-day, - the Coulomb, the 

 Volt, the Ohm, etc. In the experimental work he collabor- 

 ated in part with his Gottingen colleague Wilhelm Weber, 

 who was twenty-seven years younger, and whose chief life 

 work became the development of the system for electrical 

 quantities, together with all the preliminary work necessary 

 for this purpose. Gauss himself confined his work to laying 

 the foundations on the magnetic side, depending entirely on 

 Coulomb's law for the magnetic pole, which law was also 

 subjected to a very refined test, which it passed successfully. ^ 



The system of absolute units takes its origin from three 

 fundamental units: space, mass, and time (centimetre, gram, 

 second); all other units are deduced from these, solely by 

 means of laws of nature, and therefore without any other 

 arbitrary act than the choice of these laws. The ordinary 

 unit of force (the gram-weight) is avoided, since it only has a 

 definite value for a definite latitude and height above sea-level, 



1 See Nature, Au^. 29, 1931, 'Gauss' Investigations on Electro- 

 dynamics,' by Clemens Schaefei. 



