Gauss …

• (1777 - 1855) was a teacher and made discoveries in electromagnetics, astronomy, geometry and other sciences and mathematics.
• He made many ground breaking changes to math and science. Some of his greatest changes started when he was a teenager.
• As a young boy, Gauss was asked by his teacher to add the numbers from 1 to 100. The teacher wanted to get rid of the boy for a little while. Gauss reasoned that you could pair up 50 + 1 = 51, 49 + 2 = 51, and so on. Since this would make 50 pairs of 51, he multiplied 50 x 51 in a minute and got 2,550. He immediately returned to the unbelieving teacher with the answer.
• His fluid way of thinking influenced many others of his time to see space in a new way.
• Regarding flat Euclidean space he wrote in a private letter in 1824, "The assumption that (in a triangle) the sum of the three angles is less than 180 degrees leads to a curious geometry, quite different from ours, but thoroughly consistent, which I have developed to my entire satisfaction." In this he was the first of several Non-Euclidean geometers to work with curved space.
• Riemann later developed these ideas - and they became the foundation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.