In the late 1700s, there was a very mischievous boy in a German elementary school. He was always a playful child. Once he was given to add from 1 to 100 as a punishment for a defiant (wrong) act he did. ,This is a very difficult problem for a child in the primary section.
But this kid solves the problem in seconds, much to the teacher's surprise.
How did he do it? He solved it by rearranging the terms from 1 to 100 as
follows.
`001+101=101`
`002+099=101`
`003+098=101`
`049+052=101`
`050+051=101`
He realized that there are 50 such pairs, each adding up to 101. So, the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 100 is 101 times 50, which is 5050. He wrote this answer on his board and gave it to the teacher.
By rearranging the terms in this way, the answer can be obtained very quickly and easily. Using this method, the formula for units of the qualitative series used today was derived from this.
This exceptionally gifted student was the famous mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss.
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| Figure 1: Carl Friedrich Gauss |
There is another interesting story that demonstrates the genius of Gauss. He was born in what is now Northwest Germany. His mother was an illiterate woman. She had kept no record of her child Gauss' birthday. She knew his birthday was 8 days before the Feast of Ascension. (i.e., 39 days before Easter) After later finding the date of Easter, he was able to find the date of his birth without any error. His birthday was 30 April 1777.
He was able to solve very difficult math problems from a young age. Even at the age of 3, he corrected his father's calculations. When he was 21 years old, he wrote 'Disquisitiones Arithmeticae' about Number Theory.
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| Figure 2: Cover of Gauss's masterpiece "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae'" |
Refrencess
https://www.studymumbai.com/carl-friedrich-gauss/?noamp=mobile
- Ashan Jayamal -
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