Carl Friedrich Gauss (30.04.1777-23.02.1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer and physicist. He was born in Brunswick. He studied at the University of Göttingen in 1795 — 98, and from 1807 he was professor at that university and director of its astronomical observatory.
His research covered many branches of physics. In 1832 he created an absolute system of units, introducing three base units: the unit of time, 1 s, the unit of length, 1 mm, and the unit of mass, 1 mg; and in 1833, together with W. Weber, he built the first electromagnetic telegraph in Germany. In 1839, in his work “The General Theory of Forces of Attraction and Repulsion Acting Inversely as the Square of the Distance”, he set out the foundations of potential theory, in particular a number of propositions and theorems, for example the fundamental theorem of electrostatics (the Gauss — Ostrogradsky theorem). In 1840, in his work “Dioptrical Investigations”, he developed the theory of image formation in complex optical systems. As early as 1845 he arrived at the idea that electromagnetic interactions propagate at a finite speed. He studied terrestrial magnetism and invented the unipolar magnetometer in 1837 and the bifilar one in 1838. In 1829 he formulated the principle of least constraint (Gauss's principle). He was one of the first to suggest, in 1818, the possible existence of a non-Euclidean geometry.
A Fellow of the Royal Society (1804), a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1820) and of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1824).