Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss; Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss)was a German mathematician who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, mechanics, electrostatics, astronomy, matrix theory, and optics...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth30 April 1777
CountryGermany
sex freedom men
[On Sophie Germain] When a person of the sex which, according to our customs and prejudices, must encounter infinitely more difficulties than men... succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of [number theory], then without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius.
infinite
The Infinite is only a manner of speaking.
numbers jewels scales
The total number of Dirichlet's publications is not large: jewels are not weighed on a grocery scale.
mathematics controversy
In mathematics there are no true controversies.
truth philosopher corny
When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
views roots squares
That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.
use infinite mathematics
I protest against the use of infinite magnitude ..., which is never permissible in mathematics.
funny waiting almost-done
Ask her to wait a moment I am almost done.
mathematics relation concerned
Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.
ideas tables calculations
You have no idea, how much poetry there is in the calculation of a table of logarithms!
discovery woods violet
Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no human can hasten or retard.
law demand scientist
By explanation the scientist understands nothing except the reduction to the least and simplest basic laws possible, beyond which he cannot go, but must plainly demand them; from them however he deduces the phenomena absolutely completely as necessary.
simple order training
As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics.
character simple profound
A great part of its [higher arithmetic] theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.