Description

The genius of Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) and the novelty of his work (published in Latin, German, and occasionally French) in areas as diverse as number theory, probability and astronomy were already widely acknowledged during his lifetime. But it took another three generations of mathematicians to reveal the true extent of his output as they studied Gauss' extensive unpublished papers and his voluminous correspondence. This posthumous twelve-volume collection of Gauss' complete works, published between 1863 and 1933, marks the culmination of their efforts and provides a fascinating account of one of the great scientific minds of the nineteenth century. Volume 12, which appeared in 1929, contains a great variety of posthumous notes and fragments, scientific correspondence and even proposals for problems to be set at scientific competitions. The volume also includes a reproduction of Gauss' 1840 atlas of geomagnetism.