Karl Friedrich Gauss was born in Brunswick, Germany in 1777. Gauss studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen from 1795 to 1798. He became the Director of the Gottingen Observatory from 1807 until his death. His father was a manual laborer but noticed his son's talents quite early. It has been said that Karl displayed incredible talent in math at a very young age. There are stories that tell of him managing his father's business accounts before the age of 5 and apparently even catching a payroll error. When a teacher asked him to add up the numbers between 1 and 100, (to keep him busy) Gauss quickly found a short cut for the answer 5050. A well known today....thanks to Gauss. He called mathematics "the queen of the sciences" and arithmetic "the queen of mathematics.Gauss had three children.

Contributions:

• At 24 years of age, he wrote a book called Disquisitines Arithmeticae, which is regarded today as one of the most influential books written in math.
• He also wrote the first modern book on number theory, and proved the law of quadratic reciprocity.
• In 1801, Gauss discovered and developed the method of least squares fitting, 10 years before Legendre, unfortunately, he didn't publish it.
• Gauss proved that every number is the sum of at most three triangular numbers and developed the algebra of congruences.

Famous Quote:

'Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.' Apparently said while working, and being informed that his wife was dying.