Friedrich Gauss, the wonderful mental calculator and the dwarf planet

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist sometimes known as "the Prince of Mathematicians". Gauss is ranked as one of history's most influential mathematicians. He referred to mathematics as "the queen of sciences.”

In that same year, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres, but could only watch it for a few days. Friedrich Gauss predicted correctly the position at which it could be found again, and it was rediscovered on 31 December 1801 in Gotha. Zach noted that "without the intelligent work and calculations of Doctor Gauss we might not have found Ceres again."

Piazzi had only been able to track Ceres for a couple of months, following it for three degrees across the night sky. Then it disappeared temporarily behind the glare of the Sun. Several months later, when Ceres should have reappeared, Piazzi could not locate it: the mathematical tools of the time were not able to extrapolate a position from such a scant amount of data—three degrees represent less than 1% of the total orbit. Gauss, who was 23 at the time, heard about the problem and tackled it. After three months of intense work, he predicted a position for Ceres in December 1801—just about a year after its first sighting—and this turned out to be accurate within a half-degree. In the process, he so streamlined the cumbersome mathematics of 18th century orbital prediction that his work—published a few years later as Theory of Celestial Movement—remains a cornerstone of astronomical computation.

Gauss was a prodigious mental calculator. Reputedly, when asked how he had been able to predict the trajectory of Ceres with such accuracy he replied, "I used logarithms." The questioner then wanted to know how he had been able to look up so many numbers from the tables so quickly. "Look them up?" Gauss responded. "Who needs to look them up? I just calculate them in my head!"