Carl Friedrich Gauss was among the greatest of all mathematicians and he was also a talented experimenter and astronomer. He was born into a poor family in Brunswick, Germany. When Gauss was only 14, the Duke of Brunswick became aware of his mathematical genius and paid for his education at the Caroline College in Brunswick and later at the University of Göttingen, where he was to stay until his death. While he was at the College he developed his interest in number theory, focusing especially on the patterns among prime numbers. He received his doctorate in 1799 for what was the first rigorous proof the fundamental theorem of algebra. Two years later he published his finest work, the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, which was devoted to the theory of numbers. Among the results he obtained was the proof of the impossibility of constructing a regular heptagon with a straight edge and a compass (this problem had baffled mathematicians since antiquity). In 1809, nine years after Giuseppe Piazzi had identified and then 'lost' the first asteroid Ceres, Gauss brilliantly calculated the asteroid's orbit (using only three observations) and predicted correctly where it would reappear. The 1001st planetoid to be discovered was named Gaussia in recognition of his contributions to astronomy. In conjunction with Wilhelm Weber, Gauss conducted research into magnetism and electricity and in 1833 invented an electromagnetic telegraph. He also devised a number of units for magnetic phenomenon and a unit for magnetic flux density is also named after him. Gauss contributed theories to many different mathematical areas, for example Gauss' law, is a key result in the analysis of vector fields. He also developed interests in topological areas such as crystallography, mechanics and optics, and it was only after his death in 1855 that the true scope and his work was fully recognized.
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