534 



NA TURE 



[April 19, 1877 



Certain rumours led to a run upon the Admiralty for copies. 

 " The Lords were in a difficulty ; but on looking at the list they 

 saw names, as they thought, which were so obscure, that they 

 had a right to assume Mr. Baily had included persons who had 

 no claim to such a compliment as presentation from the Admir- 

 alty. The secretary requested Mr. Baily to call upon him. 'Mr. 

 Baily, my Lords are inclined to think that some of the persons 

 in this list are perhaps not of that note which would justify their 

 lordships in presenting this work.' ' To whom does your ob- 

 servation apply, Mr. Secretary.' 'Well, now let us examine 

 the list ; let me see ; now — now — now — come ! — here's Gauss 

 — 7vho^s Gauss ? ' ' Gauss, Mr. Secretary, is the oldest mathe- 

 matician now living, and is generally thought to be the greatest.'" 

 Their Lordships ultimately expressed themselves perfectly satis- 

 fied with the list. Who then was Gauss ? He was the son of a 

 bricklayer at Brunswick, and it was the wish of his father that 

 the boy should be a bricklayer too. The lad, however, was 

 another 'Pascal,^ and early showed a marvellous aptitude for 

 calculation; indeed he might be said to have "lisped in 

 numbers," for he used jokingly to say that he could reckon 

 before he could talk. When scarcely three years old he pointed 

 out the inaccuracy of an account, " Vater, die Rechnung ist 

 falsch, es macht so viel," and the boy was right. At the public 

 school of Biittner he soon attracted the attention of Bartels, sub- 

 sequently Professor of Mathematics at Dorpat, and father-in-law 

 of Struve, by whom he was brought under the notice of Charles 

 William, the reigning Duke of Brunswick. The Duke became 

 Gauss's good friend, and sent him in 1 792 2 to the Collegium 

 Carolinum, much against the father's wish. Having nothing 

 more to learn from the pro'essors here, he went in 1795^ to 

 Gbttingen, as yet undecided whether to pursue philology or 

 mathematics. Kaestnerwas at this time mathematical professor, 

 of whom Gauss said : " He was the first of geometers among 

 poets and first of poets among geometers." 



Here, too, he was independent of his teachers, and having 

 made several of his greatest discoveries in analysis (the Higher 

 Arithmetic especially became his favourite study, and he called 

 it a divine science^ " l\Iathematics, the Queen of the Sciences, 

 and Arithmetic, the Queen of Mathematics " •*), henceforth he 

 made mathematics the main study of his life. 



Having finished his college course, he returned to Brunswick, 

 and in 1798 repaired for a short time to Helmstadt to consult 

 the library there. Again the next year we find him at Helm- 

 stadt, and he is now atle to improve his acquaintance with 

 Pfaff, having had only an hour or two of intercourse with him in 

 [he previous year, and the two mathematicians were much to- 

 f;ether, the probability being that Gauss communicated more 

 ihan he received.^ 



In 1807, whilst a private teacher at Brunswick, the Emperor 

 of Russia offered him a chair at the Academy of St. Petersburg, 

 but by the advice of Olbers he declined the appointment." On 

 fuly 9 in this year he was appointed the first director of the new 

 Gbttingen Observatory and Professor of Astronomy in the Uni- 

 versity. His life henceforth was spent at Gottingen, in the 

 midst of continuous work ; in other respects it was quite unevent- 

 ful. From the year 1828, when he was invited to Berlin by 

 Humboldt to attend a meeting of natural philosophers in that 

 city, he never left his university until 1854, in which year rail- 

 way communication was opened up between Hanover and 



S c/. Prof. H. J. S. Smith's Presidential Address, Proceedings of London 

 Mathematical Society, vol. viii p. 18, and Larrouse. At the age of ten he 

 was acquainted with the Binomial Theorem and the theory of infinite series, 

 "Gauss. Z Ged," p. 13. 



* " Gauss. Zum Gediichtniss," p. 15. Roy. Ast. Soc. Motithly Notices, 

 vol. xvi. pp. 80-83. larrouse, " Grande Dictionnaire," Paris, 1872, gives 

 erroneously 1789. 



3 Larrouse and Michaud's " Biographic Universelle," Paris, 1856, both 

 give this date 1794; see also Roy. Ast boc. Monthly Notices. 



* " Gauss. Z, Ged.," pp. 79. 86. 



5 Roy. Ast. Soc. Notices point out that the idea that Gauss studied under 

 Pfaff is an erroneous one This error occurs in the "Encyclopaedia Brit ," 

 1.856 (8th edition). Laplace, when asked who was the greatest mathema- 

 tician in Germany, replied, Pfaff; his interrogator said he should have 

 thought Gauss was. " Oh," replied Laplace, " ffaff est b'en la plus grand 

 niathematicien de I'Allemagne, mais Gauss est le plus grand mathematicien 

 lie I'Europp." The statement that Gau-s graduated at Helmstadt in 1799 

 { Proceedings of Roy. Snc., vol. vii. p. 598) is erroneous'; see " Gauss. Z. 

 Gtd.," p. 22. The degree was conferred upon him in nhscntiCi. No infor- 

 m.ition upon this point is given either in Poggendorff, " Biog. Lit Hand- 

 uOrterbuch," Leipzig, 1863, or in the Cotthtgische geicltrie Au'^cigen{vcA 

 vol. for 1855). 



' 01ber.s, in a letter to Heeren, states that Gauss had a marked objection 

 to a mathematical chair; his desire was to obtain the post of astronomer at 

 an observatory, in order that he might spend all his time upon his observa- 

 tii^ns and his profound studies for the advancement of science. 



Gottingen.^ His life was passed in a simple and regular 

 manner, he enjoyed good sound health in spite of the fatigues of 

 night observations, he seldom required a physician until a few 

 months before his death, when he suffered much from asthma, 

 which was subsequently complicated by the accession of dropsy. 

 So passed away in his seventy-eighth year. Gauss, one of the 

 greatest hghts of the present age, a mathematician worthy to be 

 placed on the same high platform as Archimedes and Newton.^ 

 We are told that his tastes were simple (he never wore 

 any of the numerous decorations which were showered down 

 upon him), and that he had the full knowledge, which men 

 of genius often have, of his superiority to the mass of 

 mankind.^ Though he looked upon mathematics as the prin- 

 cipal means for developing human knowledge,^ he yet fully 

 recognised the beneficial influence of an acquaintance with 

 classical literature. He had indeed a wonderful faculty for the 

 acquisition of languages ; he was acquainted with most of the 

 European languages, and could speak many of them well.^ At 

 the age of sixty-two he commenced the study of the Russian 

 language, and mastered it in two years. Pie took a great 

 interest too in politics to within a few weeks of his death. His lec- 

 tures, in which he adopted the analytic method, were exceedingly 

 clear expositions ; in them he liked to discuss the methods and 

 the roads by which he had arrived at his great results. He re- 

 quired the closest attention, and objected to the taking of notes, 

 lest his hearers should lose the thread of his argument. The 

 students seated round the lecture-table listened with delight to 

 the lucid and animated addresses of their master ; addresses 

 more resembling conversations than set lectures. The chief 

 figure in this group stands before us with clear, bright eyes, the 

 right eyebrow raised higher than the left [more Astro no morum), a 

 forehead high and wide, overhung with grey locks, and a coun- 

 tenance whose variations were all expressive of the great mind 

 within." We can wel 1 understand how his pupils reverenced 

 him and never forgot these meetings. Gauss was always ready 

 to converse even with persons unacquainted with the subjects he 

 had made his own, and his animation in doing so bore evidence 

 to the delight he took in the contemplation of nature. It was 

 this feeling that led him a short time before his death to have 

 engraved at the foot of his portrait the following lines as express- 

 ing best the philosophy of his ideas and of his writings : — 



"Thou, Nature, art my Goddess, to thy laws 

 My services are bound I " 

 " Gauss. Z. Ged.," p. 79. Shakspeare, King Lear, Act L Scene ii. 

 The full list of Gauss's writings would fill many of our 

 columns; there is a list on columns 854-857 of PoggendorfT; 

 Larrouse gives a very full list also, but the most complete list we 

 know, not including the larger works, is given in the Royal 

 Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers. The titles are given 

 of 124 papers. 



One of Gauss's earliest discoveries is the "method of least 

 squares." This method, though first published by Legendre, 

 was applied by Gauss as early as the year 1795.'' It is some- 

 what remarkable that Gauss has devoted so few memoirs to 



1 He is said never to have slept from under the roof of his own observatory 

 but on the one above-named occasion, and in the last-named year, i.e. , the 

 year before he died, to have seen for the first time a locomotive. During 

 this visit to Berlin, Gauss made the acquaintance of Weber. "Z. Ged." 

 p. 61. 



2 To use the words of Gauss's successor at Gottingen. A great living 

 English mathematician says : " The mathematician lives long and lives 

 young ; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become 

 clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar 

 life." (Dr. Sylvester's address at the Exeter Meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion, 1869.) He cites Leibnitz 70, Euler 76, Lagrange 77, Laplace 78, Gauss 

 78, Plato 82, Newton 85, Archimedes 75 (then killed by a Roman soldier), 

 Pythagoras 99. 



3 "Gauss. Z. Ged.," p. 95. He was a man of determined character, of 

 strong will, and one who disdained all half-heartedness ; (and p, 102) His 

 character showed a curious mixture of self-conscious dignity and childlike 

 simplicity. Larrouse says he was but little communicative and morose, not 

 to say peevish. 



4 A short time before his death he spoke to a celebrated psychologist on the ', 

 possibility of putting psychology on a mathematical basis. _ _ J 



5 "Gauss. Z. Ged.," p. 94, says he read Gibbon and Macaulay's histories j 

 with great interest. He was immensely amused (p. 93) with "The Moon 3 

 rises broad in the north-west," which occurs in one of Sir W. Scott's novels. | 

 He would not tell his friends what had set him laughing until after collecting! 

 a variety of editions of the novel in question he found that the passage was,j 

 not a misprint. _ % 



6 We are here indebted to M. Wagener the writer of the notice in the j 

 '• Biographie Universelle (Michaud)," Paris, 1856. 1 



7 Theoria Motus, lib. ii. § iii. See Glaisher "On the Law of Facility oil 

 Errors of Observations, and On the Method of Least Squares." Roy. Ast.; 

 .Soc. Memoirs, vol. xxxix (1872), in which is collected much information on : 

 the subject. Also Todhunter's " History of Theory of Probability," § 1.017 j 

 and elsewhere. Roy. Soc. Proceedings, p. 592. 



