Carl Friedrich Gauss: Child math prodigy and an influential mathematician

Here are some interesting fact about mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss and how as a young child he solved difficult math problems using simple techniques.

In the late 1700’s, in a German Elementary school as a punishment for misbehaving with the teacher, a child was asked to do sum 1 to 100.

The teacher was astonished when the kid solved the problem within seconds as:

S = 1+ 2+ 3+….+100
S= 100+ 99 + 98 +…. + 1

This results in:
2*S = 101+ 101+ 101+ ….+101
= 101*100 (100 times)
=> S = 101*50 = 5050

Isn’t that amazing? A difficult math problem became so simple when solved in this manner.

This student was famous mathematician and physical scientist CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS.

When Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born in present-day northwestern Germany, his mother was illiterate. She never recorded his date of birth, but she knew it was a Wednesday, eight days before the Feast of the Ascension, which is 39 days after Easter.

Later, Gauss determined his own birthday by finding the date of Easter, and deriving mathematical methods of deriving dates from the past and future. It is believed that he was able to calculate his exact birth date without error, determining it was April 30, 1777.

He proved himself to be a child prodigy (solved difficult math problems, he even used to correct his father’s math when he was just 3 years old), discovered several breakthrough mathematical theorems, and wrote a textbook on number theory. Carl Friedrich Gauss wrote Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, a textbook on number theory, when he was only 21.

Carl Friedrich Gauss was among the most influential mathematicians the world has ever seen. Read more here.

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