Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (Gauß (April 30, 1777 - February 23, 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer and physicist with a very wide range of contributions; he is considered to be one of the leading mathematicians of all time. (His name rhymes with "house", and is sometimes spelled Gaußin German.)

Gauss was born in Braunschweig, Duchy of Brunswick-Lneburg (now part of Germany) as only son of lower-class uneducated parents. According to legend, while in elementary school, his teacher tried to occupy pupils by making them add up the (whole) numbers from 1 to 100. Shortly thereafter, to the astonishment of all, the young Gauss produced the correct answer, having realized that pairwise addition of terms from opposite ends of the list yielded identical intermediate sums.

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