Maths Times Infinity > History > Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss
{30/4/1777 - 23/2/1855}
Widely considered to have been one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived. He contributed to many areas of maths and science.
One day, Gauss' maths teacher was busy and wanted to give the students something that would occupy them for a while. So the teacher asked the students to add all the numbers from 1 up to 100. Unexpectedly, Carl came up with the answer in seconds - 5,050. He apparantly reasoned than the numbers 1 to 50 can be paired off with the numbers from 100 to 51 so that the pairs all add to 101. There are 50 pairs so the total is 50x101=5,050.
Mathematics is the queen of sciences and arithmetic is the queen of mathematics.
When Gauss was young, he had to decide between becoming a painter and becoming a mathematician. On his 19th birthday, he demonstrated that a regular 17-gon could be constructed with a ruler and compass and this sealed his fate as a great mathematician. This probably isn't completely accurate.
Many things were named after him, such as Gaussian blur.