Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), one of the foremost mathematician of all time, was called ‘the Princeps mathematicorum’, meaning ‘the Prince of Mathematicians’. He made profound contributions to almost every area of mathematics and mathematical physics such as statistics, differential geometry, astronomy, number theory, electrostatics, analysis, geophysics and optics.
Gauss came from a peasant background in Brunswick, Germany. His extraordinary talent for mathematics showed itself at a very early age. By the age of three, he had discovered for himself enough arithmetic to be able to correct his father’s calculations when he heard him working out wages for laborers. At the age of ten he astonished his schoolteacher Mr. Buttner by discovering the formula for the sum of an arithmetical progression. He had an astounding memory and ability to do mental calculation. His tutor Martin Bartels remarked, “Young Gauss has to hear or see something only once and he knows it forever. When he learns something new, he combines it with what he already knows to produce a deeper and broader understanding. … He figured out all of basic arithmetic on his own before he ever started school. He plays with numbers the way that other children play with toys. His mind is never idle.” Impressed by his intellectual gift, his teacher recommended him to the duke of Brunswick in 1791, who granted him financial assistance to continue his education at Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick and later to study mathematics at the University of Göttingen from 1795 to 1798. Gauss received his doctorate in 1799 from the University of Helmstedt for a proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra. The discovery of the method for drawing a 17-gon using only a straight-edge and compass by 18 year old Gauss was enough to guarantee that Gauss would be considered one of the world’s greatest mathematicians.
Less known is the fact that Gauss had interest in religious and philosophical topics like God, soul and eternity of life. He remarked, “There are questions on whose answers I would place an infinitely higher value than on the mathematical, for example, concerning ethics, concerning our relationship to God, concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies quite unattainable above us and quite outside the area of science.” Two religious works which Gauss read frequently were Braubach’s Seelenlehre (Psychology of the Soul) and Siissmilch’s Göttliche Ordnung gerettet (Divine Order). He also devoted considerable time to the New Testament in the original Greek. He once said, “For the soul there is a satisfaction of a higher type; the material is not at all necessary.” Gauss meditated about the future of the human soul, and he was always striving to harmonize such views with the principles of mathematics. He was inspired by Leibniz’s view — “The mathematical sciences, which deal with eternal truths rooted in the divine mind, prepare us for knowledge of substances.” Gauss gave frequent reference to his conviction of the immortality of the soul. In his words, “…whether the soul lives 80 years or 80 million years, if it perishes once, then this space of time is only a reprieve. One is therefore forced to the view, for which there is so much evidence even though without rigorous scientific basis, that besides this material world another, second, purely spiritual world order exists, with just as many diversities as that in which we live—we are to participate in it.” This divine wisdom was the strength of his soul up to that last silent midnight when his eyes closed forever.