1796 One day, at the University of G? ttingen in Germany, a 19-year-old young man finished his dinner and began to do three routine math problems assigned to him by his tutor. He is very talented in mathematics, so his tutor has high hopes for him and gives him difficult math problems as training every day. Under normal circumstances, he always finishes this special homework in two hours.

As usual, the first two topics were finished in two hours. The third question, written on a small piece of paper, is to make a positive 17 polygon with only compasses and an uncalibrated ruler. The youth didn't care and began to do as the first two questions did. However, doing and doing, young people find it more and more difficult. At first, he thought, maybe my tutor saw that my daily problems were going well, and this time it added to my troubles. However, with the passage of time, no progress has been made on the third question. Young people have racked their brains, but they can't think of any help to solve this problem.

Difficulties inspired the young man's fighting spirit. He said to himself, I must do it! He picked up the compass and ruler and scratched on the paper, trying to solve the problem with unconventional ideas. When the window showed a glimmer of light, the young man breathed a sigh of relief, and he finally worked out the difficult problem.

He felt a little guilty and blamed himself when he met his mentor. He said to his tutor, "I spent the whole night on the third question you assigned me, and failed to live up to your cultivation ..."

The young man was immediately shocked when his tutor looked at his homework. He said to the young man in a trembling voice, "Did you really do this yourself?" The young man looked at the excited tutor with some doubts and replied, "Of course. However, I was so stupid that it took me a whole night to make it. " The tutor asked the young man to sit down, took out the compass and ruler, spread the paper on the desk, and asked the young man to make a positive 17 polygon in front of him. The young man soon succeeded. The tutor said excitedly to the young man, "Do you know that you have solved a math unsolved case with a history of more than 2,000 years? Archimedes didn't solve it, Newton didn't solve it, and you solved it overnight! You are a genius! I have been studying this difficult problem recently. When I assigned you a topic yesterday, I accidentally put a small note of this difficult problem in the topic and gave it to you. "

Many years later, when the young man recalled this scene, he always said, "If someone told me that this is a math problem with a history of more than 2,000 years, I could not solve it for one night."

This young man is Gauss, the prince of mathematics.