Page:Heroes of the telegraph (IA cu31924031222494).djvu/277

 and the planet by that time was lost in the glory of the sun, By a method of his own, published in his Theoria Motus Corporum Clestium, Gauss calculated the orbit of this planet, and showed that it moved between Mars and Jupiter. The planet, after eluding the search of several astronomers, was ultimately found again by Zach on December 7, 1801, and on January 1, 1802. The ellipse of Gauss was found to coincide with its orbit.

This feat drew the attention of the Hanoverian Government, and of Dr. Olbers, the astronomer, to the young mathematician. But some time elapsed before he was fitted with a suitable appointment. The battle of Austerlitz had brought the country into danger, and the Duke of Braunschweig was entrusted with a mission from Berlin to the Court of St. Petersburg. The fame of Gauss had travelled there, but the duke resisted all attempts to bring or entice him to the university of that place. On his return home, however, he raised the salary of Gauss.

At the beginning of October 1806, the armies of Napoleon were moving towards the Saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of Auerstadt and Jena were fought and lost. Duke Charles Ferdinand was mortally wounded, and taken back to Braunschweig. A deputation waited on the offended Emperor at Halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke to die in his own house. They were brutally denied by the Emperor, and returned to Braunschweig to try and save the unhappy duke from imprisonment. One evening in the late autumn, Gauss, who lived in the Steinweg (or Causeway), saw an invalid carriage drive slowly out of the castle garden towards the Wendenthor. It contained the wounded duke on his way to Altona, where he died on November 10, 1806, in a small house at Ottensen, 'You will take care,' wrote Zach to Gauss, in 1803, 'that his great name shall also be written on the firmament.'

For a year and a half after the death of the duke Gauss continued in Braunschweig, but his small allowance, and the absence of scientific company made a change desirable. Through Olbers and Heeren he received a call to the directorate of Göttingen University in 1807, and at once accepted it. He took a house near the chemical laboratory, to which he brought his wife and family. The building of the observatory, delayed for want of funds, was finished in 1816, and a year or two later it was fully equipped with instruments.

In 1819, Gauss measured a degree of latitude between