Numbers & OperationsProbability & Statistics
Carl Friedrich Gauss
1777 – 1855 · Germany
The 'prince of mathematicians' who summed 1 to 100 as a boy
Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician famous for a childhood story: asked to add the numbers 1 through 100, he paired them off and answered in seconds. He gave the first rigorous proof of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic — that every whole number splits uniquely into primes — and described the bell-shaped normal (Gaussian) distribution that sits at the heart of statistics.
Key contributions
- Proved the fundamental theorem of arithmetic
- The normal (Gaussian) distribution
- The modern foundations of number theory in Disquisitiones Arithmeticae