Fortunately, however, the real schoolmaster has never been buried by the environment. Because of the particularity of this subject, mathematicians are all geniuses, and their IQ exceeds all other geniuses, and Gauss is the most outstanding among these geniuses. There is a short story that Gauss himself told many times, that is, one day before he was three years old, Gauss's father added up the long bills in his hand when calculating the wages of workers. When he added it to the end, he suddenly heard his younger son say to him, "Dad, your calculation is wrong, and the answer is-"
To his surprise, the father calculated it again and found that his little son was correct. In the current early education environment, some trained children can do this. But no one has ever taught Gauss anything about mathematics and calculation. He totally relies on his usual observation and logical ability to sum up and learn numbers and addition and subtraction! Like Euler, another mathematician who is good at calculation, Gauss showed great complex mental arithmetic ability since childhood and never regressed in his later years.
In modern times, if you see such an excellent mathematical genius, parents will definitely send their children to various Olympic math classes and give him the most perfect systematic education. But Gauss grew up in different environments. He was also raised in the village until he was seven years old before he entered the rural primary school. An old teacher taught him basic alphabet grammar. It was not until 10 years old that Gauss began his first math class and began to formally contact science.
This is a well-known short film, which shows Gauss's wonderful performance in the first math class. The truth of this passage is very high, because Gauss and his friends have said it. Some people say that in the first class, in order to save trouble, after teaching numbers and addition, the teacher gave the children a topic: 1+2+3+...+ 100, and let the children solve it themselves. Among the scratching and bewildered Xiong Haizi, only Gauss calmly wrote the answer directly: 5050.
When he raised his hand to signal that the teacher had finished, the teacher didn't believe him at all. He thought that the youngest child in this class must be a person who can't do anything, so he wrote a few casually. It was not until the papers were collected that the teacher found that all the children were wrong. Only when the child has written the answer at the beginning is the correct answer. The teacher asked the boy how to calculate in surprise. Gauss said that he simplified 1+2+3+ 100 to (1+100)+(2+99)+(50+51), so he only needed to calculate 65438.
The teacher was deeply shocked. Although this mathematical skill is not very complicated, it is unheard of for children to master it. The teacher tried his best to buy the best math book for the children at that time, even beyond his own level, and Gauss finished learning it easily. Deeply impressed by the bright future of this child, the teacher recommended him to the local Duke of Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand.
Supporting scholars and promising young people was what many European aristocrats were willing to do at that time. Young Gauss's talent in mathematics touched the duke, who was willing to pay for him. As a result, Gauss got rid of the fate of his family, entered the college of pre-university at the age of 15, and entered a brand-new field.
There is little information about who Gauss's teacher is. He embarked on the road of mathematics. At that time, Gauss basically mastered all the knowledge of mathematics through self-study. It seems that he was born for mathematics, and this subject has almost no secrets in front of him. Like other great scholars of that era, he was actually proficient in other disciplines and showed great interest in philosophy. But he finally devoted himself to mathematics and advanced the birth of modern mathematics for many years.
Before Gauss, mathematics was actually a building with air leakage everywhere. Many parts of the certificate are not detailed and strict enough. Newton, Leibniz and other predecessors sometimes directly use the reasoning they think is definitely correct, and then forget to prove it (Newton likes to do this kind of thing). However, according to Gauss, any conclusion without strict argumentation is nonsense. In this way, gauss, a teenager, while reading the works of Newton and others, once again proved things that had never been written, done or strictly proved before, and directly transformed the math classroom from a leaky building into a gorgeous and solid hall.
Don't believe the chicken soup stories of scientists who didn't study well when they were young and finally became masters through hard work. In fact, science priests are real masters, not only primary schools, middle schools, universities, but also independent colleges. Even in this group of schoolmasters, Gauss is the most arrogant and cool guy. Other scientists, who can put forward their own theories in their twenties and thirties, are already unknown cows, while Gauss learned to teach himself and revise textbooks while reading in his teens, and became a veritable schoolmaster in his twenties.
There is also a clip of a famous young schoolmaster Gauss. Some people say that when he was studying, the teacher had given him homework three times. He finished the first two problems easily, but the third geometry problem stumped him and made him think all night. The next day, he was ashamed to hand over his homework to the teacher, and said that the third question kept him awake all night, indicating that he still had a long way to go in mathematics.
The teacher was surprised at that time. From the bottom of my heart, I clearly left two for you. What the hell is the third question? He was surprised when the teacher opened his homework with trepidation. This third problem is obviously a peerless problem handed down from the ancient Greek era. "Rulers and rulers draw seventeen sides." I have been studying recently, and accidentally gave Gauss the draft paper with this question written on it. As a result, this problem, which has not been solved for more than two thousand years, was regarded as a bit difficult homework by Gauss, and it only took one night …
Not only that, Gauss also proved by the way that regular polygons can be drawn with straightedge and straightedge, thus completely solving the problem of drawing regular polygons with straightedge and straightedge. Some chicken soup articles often write lyrically: "If Gauss had known in advance that this was a difficult problem for more than two thousand years, he might never have solved it. The most difficult thing is not the difficulty itself, but the fear of it.
This sentence is very emotional and literary, but it doesn't mean anything to Gauss. His existence is to solve the problem that has plagued mankind for thousands of years like a joke, and gallop on the road of mathematics at a speed beyond people's imagination. When he 18 officially finished the preparatory class and entered the University of G? ttingen, he had made a series of immortal achievements such as the second antinomy and the least square method, and began to write his first masterpiece, Arithmetic Research. This book was finished when he was 20 years old, but it was not officially published until he was 24 years old because of Gauss's continuous efforts and the delay of publishers.
This book doesn't seem to need much knowledge at first, but it seems to contain an infinite treasure of wisdom. In this seven-section book, Gauss perfectly combined the research on arithmetic, algebra and geometry at that time, and organized the "treasure" of mathematics-number theory into a complete discipline. This perfect book was later called "The Book of Seven Seals" by mathematicians in Secondary Two. On the one hand, it is used to describe the difficulties of this book, on the other hand, it also shows the gains after understanding the seal.
At that time, the amateur mathematician Fermat, whose position is actually a judge, put forward Fermat's last theorem. Many mathematicians have devoted themselves to it, and Paris also held a rich prize competition to see which mathematician can put this problem in the first place. Gauss was also invited at that time, but Gauss calmly refused the invitation. For him, he can easily put forward a lot of number theory problems that are both difficult to prove and difficult to prove, such as Fermat's last theorem. What he pursues is the theory of arithmetic research, a real system. When he takes a few more steps on this road, Fermat's hypothesis is just the natural reasoning of his theory.
Just as Gauss was ambitious and ready to write the second volume of Arithmetic Research, another thing caught his interest. Since Sir Newton put the universe under his control 100 years ago, countless astronomers have been observing the stars, hoping to discover new stars for the first time and win honors. At this time, it happened that several astronomers discovered a suspicious planet, which flashed through the telescope and quickly disappeared into the endless constellation. How can you discover this mysterious planet with this glimpse?
This is not a problem for Gauss at all. With a hint of interest and laziness in discovering new toys, Gauss easily deduced a method to calculate the orbits of planets with only three observations, which Newton thought was the most difficult problem in astrophysics. Gauss also greatly simplified the workload of orbit calculation and put forward standard calculation rules, which reduced this complicated work from many days to several hours. It is worth noting that these calculations are derived by Gauss specifically for ordinary people to understand and use. As for Gauss himself, he always does direct mental arithmetic.
Sure enough, this planet happened to appear in the position predicted by Gauss, and this planet immediately became the first asteroid discovered by human beings: Ceres.
Young Gauss is not remembered by the world because of his great works, but was once praised as the greatest mathematician and young mathematical genius because of the discovery of this asteroid. Lured by vanity, Gauss devoted all his energy to the study of astronomy in the next twenty years, and published another masterpiece, The Movement of Celestial Bodies Around the Sun, which included all the planets and comets in his formula. For astronomy, this is indeed a great achievement, and it is also the highest masterpiece of people's exploration and research on the solar system for many years to come. But as far as mathematics is concerned, this work is more about applied mathematics, and it has not brought anything new to the temple of mathematics, which is a great loss in the history of mathematics.
Unfortunately, the fields of mathematics and physics are infinite, and there is only one Gaussian. His thoughts soar freely on the scientific Yuan Ye, exploring every unknown direction all the time. Just like Newton, contemporaries recorded that Gauss often fell into his own thinking when communicating. Often after a few days of selfless thinking, Gauss will throw out another outstanding achievement and solve those desperate problems.
Whenever a major problem is solved, Gauss will simply make a note in his little diary. This humble diary, less than 20 pages, records the most important discoveries in the field of mathematics during the twenty years of Gauss' golden age. This little diary was kept by his descendants, and it was not until 43 years after Gauss's death that Gauss's grandson handed it over to the Academy of Sciences for study. From these short diaries, we can confirm many important achievements of Gauss's 100, some of which were never published, and were rediscovered and published by other mathematicians nearly a century later.
Gauss lived to be 78 years old and died peacefully in 1855.
He has always been regarded as the greatest mathematician in the world. Under many honors, he remained indifferent and conservative all his life, and maintained great creativity and high productivity until he died.
When Gauss was alive, his reputation was enough, he was easy-going, and nominally didn't care about these disputes. During his lifetime, some achievements were wrongly attributed to other researchers. It was not until later through the study of his manuscripts and diaries that people knew that he was indeed far ahead in many fields and walked in front of everyone. Gauss is obsessive-compulsive disorder. When he finds something, he usually perfects his research before he is willing to make it public. Those important studies, which are not up to his perfect standards, are deeply hidden in his manuscripts.
Many people may also ask this question: What is the significance of Gauss's research? In addition to his contribution to astronomy, his achievements in geodesy have directly helped us to obtain more accurate geographical data today. Behind this achievement, Gauss initiated the study of spherical geometry/non-Euclidean geometry, which was later inherited and developed by his student Riemann and became the mathematical cornerstone of Einstein's theory of relativity.
Gauss's contribution to electromagnetism is more remarkable. He not only led the measurement of the earth's magnetic field, but also summed up many empirical data in electromagnetism by mathematical methods, which laid a good foundation for the later development of electromagnetism. In order to commemorate his contribution, Gauss is also used as the measurement unit of magnetic field. Gauss rifle is the future main gun in science fiction works, which appears in game masterpieces such as Radiation and StarCraft.
Of course, there is more than one electromagnetic unit named after him. His name appears in more than 100 mathematical achievements and formulas, which is the most among all mathematicians. From number theory to mathematical analysis, from complex plane to differential geometry, he created almost all fields of modern mathematics by himself. Some research directions initiated by him, such as topology, are still biased towards pure theoretical subjects today, which seems to be of little use in practice.
But science, especially mathematics, cannot be simply measured by "practical use". To use an inappropriate metaphor to describe it, if science is a toolbox that we use to beat the world and make life more comfortable, then mathematics is the knowledge that leads us to discover and forge metals. Of course, this knowledge is useless when you are hiding in a cave. But when you walk out of the cave and find that the copper axe is not sharp enough to cut down the trees that keep getting in the way, only mathematics can tell you that there is a kind of metal called steel and a kind of tool called saw, which can just meet your needs of breaking trees-this is the meaning of mathematics.
It is precisely because of these mathematicians represented by Gauss that technologies such as physics, chemistry, machinery, geography, biology and information, which are closely related to us, have developed without barriers in the past few hundred years, which has triggered the revolution of industry and information and bred this colorful modern society.
Hail to Gauss and all the great mathematicians!