Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/713

Rh in arithmetic, "the queen of mathematics." After completing his course at the university, Gauss spent a short time in 1798 at Helmstadt, consulting the library there, and enjoying the society of his fellow-mathematician Pfaff. Having obtained a full supply of notes, he returned to Brunswick, and employed himself in the elaboration of the studies which have placed his name high in the list of eminent mathematicians.

In 1807 he was offered by the Czar of Russia a professorship in the Academy of St. Petersburg; but he declined the position, at the instance of Olbers, and because he felt that such a professorship would cramp his studies. His desire was to obtain the post of astronomer at an observatory, so that he could spend all his time on his observations and his studies for the advancement of science. This desire was gratified in the same year, when he was appointed Director of the Observatory and Professor of Astronomy at Göttingen. In this service he spent the rest of his life, never sleeping away from under the roof of the building, except in 1828, when he accepted an invitation to attend a meeting of the natural philosophers in Berlin, and in 1854—the year before his death—when, on the opening of the railway to Hamburg, he for the first time saw a locomotive. He consecrated all his time, says Larousse, "his genius, and his indefatigable activity, to the most abstract and profound researches in all branches of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. Endowed with most favorable health, possessing simple and modest tastes, so indifferent to display that he never wore any of the numerous decorations that the various governments decreed to him. Gauss had a gentle, upright, and correct character. Applying the greatest care to the preparation of his briefest as well as of his most elaborate memoirs, he would offer nothing to the public till it had received the last finishing touches from the workman's hand. He had engraved on his seal a tree loaded with fruit, encircled with the legend, Pauca, sed matura (few, but ripe). And he left a large number of works, which he did not consider mature enough to publish," but which arrangements were made after his death for having edited. "The genius of Gauss," Larousse continues, "was essentially original. If he was treating of a subject which had already engaged the attention of other students, it seemed as if their works were wholly unknown to him. He had his own manner of approaching the propositions, and his own method of treating them, and his solutions were absolutely new. These solutions had the merit of being general, complete, and applicable to all the cases that could be included under the question. Unfortunately, the very originality of the methods, a particular mode of notation, and the exaggerated, perhaps affected, laconicism of his demonstrations, make the reading of Gauss's works extremely