Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, magnetism, astronomy and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians", Gauss had a remarkable influence in many fields of mathematics and science and is ranked beside Euler, Newton and Archimedes as one of history's greatest mathematicians. (Gauss himself held that honor belonged rather to his student Ferdinand Eisenstein.)

Gauss was a child prodigy, of whom there are many anecdotes pertaining to his astounding precocity while a mere toddler, and made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager.

The Duke of Brunswick awarded Gauss a fellowship to the Collegium Carolinum, which he attended from 1792 to 1795, and from there went on to the University of G?ttingen from 1795 to 1798. While in college, Gauss independently rediscovered several important theorems; his breakthrough occurred in 1796 when he was able to show that any regular polygon with a number of sides which is a Fermat prime (and, consequently, those polygons with any number of sides which is the product of distinct Fermat primes and a power of 2) can be constructed by ruler and compass.

1796 was probably the most productive year for both Gauss and number theory. The construction of the heptadecagon was discovered on March 30. He invented modular arithmetic, a discovery that made working on number theory a great deal easier. His famous quadratic reciprocity law was discovered on April 8.

In his 1799 dissertation, Gauss gave a proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra. This important theorem states that every polynomial over the complex numbers must have at least one root.

Gauss also made important contributions to number theory with his 1801 book Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, which contained a clean presentation of modular arithmetic and the first proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity.

In that same year, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the planetoid Ceres.  Gauss predicted correctly the position at which it could be found again, and it was rediscovered by Franz Xaver von Zach on December 31, 1801 in Gotha, and one day later by Heinrich Olbers in Bremen.

Gauss published in 1809 under the name Theoria motus corporum coelestium in sectionibus conicis solem ambientum (theory of motion of the celestial bodies moving in conic sections around the sun).

In 1831 Gauss developed a fruitful collaboration with the physics professor Wilhelm Weber; it led to new knowledge in the field of magnetism (including finding a representation for the unit of magnetism in terms of mass, length and time) and the discovery of Kirchhoff's circuit laws in electricity. Gauss and Weber constructed the first electromagnetic telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in Gottingen.

Gauss died in Gottingen, Hanover (now part of Lower Saxony, Germany) in 1855.