Death of Gauss (1855) — The Prince of Mathematicians

Carl Friedrich Gauss died in Göttingen on February 23, 1855, aged 77. His life spanned an era: born too poor to attend school without a patron's charity, he rose to become director of the Göttingen Observatory and the most celebrated mathematician of his age. His contributions are staggering: the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (every polynomial has a complex root), the method of least squares, the construction of the heptadecagon, Gaussian integers, the Theorema Egregium in differential geometry, and a construction of the normal distribution. In his diary — kept private during his lifetime — he had recorded discoveries later re-attributed to Abel, Cauchy, Jacobi, and others. The losses are incalculable.