The academic concensus is that the three greatest mathematicians in human history are
Archimedes, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Albert Einstein. Don't believe it. As great as Archimedes and Einstein were neither could hold a candle to Gauss. Carl Friedrich Gauss
(pictured) was part of the flowering of German culture of the last half of the 19th century which included Bismarck, Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Einstein himself. This golden age of German society is viewed somewhat soberly and suspiciously by the modern world because of the two catastrophic wars initiated by Germany in the 20th century.
Gauss' work is so esoteric that only the most highly trained mathematical minds can even partially comprehend it. As a former physics major in college my advanced mathematical training enables me to understand some of Gauss' work and to appreciate just how far above the rest of the universe he really was. Gauss' Law of electric flux is an important part of the process which electifies our world. Gauss' invention of
Standard Deviation
is the closest thing there is to a popular application of Gauss' work. Standard Deviation is an indispensable tool in everything from economic theory to the calculation of the stuctural stress on buildings and bridges to gallup polls and many other mathematic calculations which keep the modern world running. Gauss also postulated the possible curvature of three dimensional space which became an integral part of the theory of relativity. But these applications are only the tip of the iceberg, the mathematic community agrees that it may be a thousand years before all the mysteries of Gauss'
thought are unraveled.
