Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


Carl Friedrich Gauss

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Titan of Science
G. Waldo Dunnington
Jeremy Gray, The Open University, Milton Keynes
Fritz-Egbert Dohse
October 2004
This item is not supplied by Cambridge University Press in your region. Please contact Mathematical Association of America for availability.
Hardback
9780883855478
£36.99
GBP
Hardback

    This biography of Gauss, by far the most comprehensive in English, is the work of a professor of German, G. Waldo Dunnington, who devoted most of his scholarly career to studying the life of Germany's greatest mathematician. The author was inspired to pursue this project at the age of twelve when he learned from his teacher in Missouri that no full biography of Gauss existed at the time. His teacher was Gauss's great granddaughter, Minna Waldeck Gauss. Long out of print and almost impossible to find on the used book market, this valuable piece of scholarship is being reissued in an augmented form with introductory remarks, an expanded and updated bibliography, and a commentary on Gauss's mathematical diary, by the eminent British mathematical historian, Jeremy Gray.

    • Reissue of a classic biography long out of print
    • The most comprehensive biography in English of the person widely regarded as the greatest ever mathematician
    • This edition is updated by the well known mathematician Jeremy Gray

    Product details

    October 2004
    Hardback
    9780883855478
    595 pages
    212 × 146 × 38 mm
    0.769kg
    49 b/w illus.
    This item is not supplied by Cambridge University Press in your region. Please contact Mathematical Association of America for availability.

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction: family background
    • 2. The enchanted boyhood
    • 3. Student days
    • 4. The young man
    • 5. Astronomy and matrimony
    • 6. Further activity
    • 7. Back to Göttingen
    • 8. Labour and sorrow
    • 9. The young professor: a decade of discovery, 1812–1822
    • 10. Geodesy and bereavement: the transitional decade, 1822–1832
    • 11. Alliance with Weber: strenuous years
    • 12. The electromagnetic telegraph
    • 13. Magnetism: physics dominant
    • 14. Surface theory, crystallography, and optics
    • 15. Germination: non-Euclidean geometry
    • 16. Trials and triumphs: experiencing conflict
    • 17. Milestones on the highways and byways
    • 18. Senex mirabilis
    • 19. Monarch of mathematics in Europe
    • 20. The doyen of German science, 1832–1855
    • 21. Gathering up the threads: a broad horizon
    • 22. Religio Scientiae: a profession of belief from the philosopher and lover of truth
    • 23. Sunset and eventide: renunciation
    • 24. Epilogue:
    • 1. Apotheosis: orations of Ewald and Sartorious
    • 2. Valhalla: posthumous recognition and honours
    • Appendices
    • Index.
      Author
    • G. Waldo Dunnington