An anecdote relates that Gauss’ attention was first directed to Ceres in the course of a conversation with Zimmermann. Piazzi rejoiced more than anyone else at the rediscovery of Ceres: “Faites, je vous en prie, mes compliments et mes remerciments à M. Gauss, qui nous a épargné beaucoup de peine et de travail, et sans lequel peut-être il ne m’aurait pas réussi de vérifier ma découverte!” Bode, Schröder, Mechain, Maskelyne, and others expressed themselves in a similar manner. Gauss’ joy was inexpressibly great. He knew the full value of his accomplishment and found it natural that specialists laid emphasis on it. Yet he remained modestly in the background and said that had it not been for Newton’s Principia he would not have been able to establish the new method. The best thing in the whole affair, he said, was the confirmation of the Newtonian hypothesis of universal gravitation.
The first open recognition Gauss received came when the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg elected him a corresponding member on January 31, 1801. Many honors quickly came to him from other learned societies. The Russian minister of state, Nikolaus von Fuss (1755–1826), wrote him officially to announce his election, and their continued correspondence presently matured into a warm friendship. This led to the Russian government’s subsequent attempt to call Gauss to the St. Petersburg observatory. This was in part due to high admiration for the Disquisitiones. The last letter of N. von Fuss to Gauss, dated March 24, 1824, announced his nomination as foreign member of the academy. N. von Fuss died at St. Petersburg on January 24, 1826, in his seventy-first year, and his death genuinely grieved Gauss.
In the summer of 1801, Zimmermann received a call from St. Petersburg. This was very enticing, for it meant greater leisure for literary activity than his triple professorship at the Carolineum allowed him. The Duke outbid this offer, raising Zimmermann to the rank of privy councillor and releasing him from all the duties of his former position. Thus Zimmermann was retained for Brunswick. Filling the two chairs he vacated at the Carolineum was not to be easy, however, for placing mathematics and natural history in one person’s hands demanded care. Even Hellwig, who had the first “say” as to this succession, urgently requested that one person be appointed for each of these branches. He proposed two excellently suited persons. Count Hollmannsegg, just returned from a four years’ journey in Portugal, had several weeks previously decided to reside in Brunswick as long as Hellwig lived, in order to collaborate with him in arranging the rich natural-history collections which he had brought home and which he hoped to complete from the sources open to him. An earlier pupil of Hellwig, Johann Carl Wilhelm Illiger, took part in this work. He had written a recognized work, his Naturhistorische Terminologies for which the philosophical faculty at Kiel had conferred on him a Ph.D. honoris causa. Assisted financially by the Duke, he was teaching privately in Brunswick. On November 14, 1801, Hellwig wrote in a “Promemoria”: “Without much commotion there has been established by this league in Brunswick a council to which will be called, in different branches of natural history, German, French, Italian, and northern research men to the complete satisfaction of those concerned.” In the interest of science, therefore, as well as of the country, it seemed highly desirable to keep Illiger in Brunswick, and for that purpose the best opportunity occurred at Zimmermann’s withdrawal. Hellwig wished to see Illiger made professor of natural history. For the professorship of mathematics he recommended no one but Ide.
This other protégé of the Duke had also justified the hopes placed in him. He had made a name for himself in 1800 with his Theorie der Weltkörper unseres Sonnensystems und ihrer elliptischen Figur, nach Herrn Laplace frei bearbeitet; in 1801 there came his System der reinen und angewandten Mechanik fester Körper. In September, 1801, he received a Ph.D. at Helmstedt, and at the beginning of the winter semester attended academic lectures in Göttingen. Although he could not match Gauss in creative depth of mind, it was agreed that he was better qualified as a teacher. “It would be wrong,” wrote Hellwig, “to pass over our talented and brilliant Gauss in silence. But that I am more for Ide in the holding of this position is settled for me by his well-known excellent teaching capacities.”
Hellwig’s plans were shattered. He himself became Zimmermann’s successor in both departments. Illiger became his son-in-law nine years later and died in 1813 as professor and director of the Zoological Museum in Berlin.
Toward the end of the year 1801 the Duke granted Gauss a yearly income of four hundred thalers in order to retain him in Brunswick and in recognition of the Disquisitiones. When Zimmermann announced this to him, he exclaimed: “But I certainly haven’t earned it, I haven’t done anything for the country yet.” He now decided to buy a sextant at his own cost and put it to practical use for his country.
The Duke sent out the order on January 25, 1803, as follows:
Then to Dr. Gauss of this city, who has refused a call to St. Petersburg, an increase of 200 thalers besides an extra wood allowance of 4 cords of beech and 8 cords of fir wood and instead of the free apartment, until he can receive such in natura, a reimbursement of 50 thalers annually has been granted. It is so ordered that said increase is to be paid, without deduction of the first quarterly payment from Christmas last year, in quarterly installments, besides the lodging compensation of 50 thalers, out of that fund from which he collects his present salary.
Thus Gauss formally entered the service of the Duke without any definite official duties, a position which suited his inclinations and needs. There was always the possibility that an observatory would be established, such as Duke Ernst II of Gotha had erected on Seeberg and had placed under the direction of von Zach.
Gauss was subjected to some criticism because of his loyalty to the Duke, which prevented him from accepting any offers of a position away from Brunswick. Even his father expressed doubt, but his mother would always defend her Carl Friedrich. Self-confident and enjoying the companionship of a small group of friends, he paid little attention to his critics.
Presently he was to be made happy by a circumstance in which he found all that had been lacking. In the course of a letter to Bolyai on December 3, 1802, Gauss wrote:
How much I rejoice over your domestic bliss. I embrace your wife, who gives my friend the sweetest jewel of life. You write me I must not allow myself to be misled by your example, and unfortunately it is a sure thing that whosoever marries enters a lottery where there are many blanks and few prizes. May heaven grant that if I should one day take the leap, I do not draw a blank. . . . On the whole I have slight connection with Göttingen. Just two weeks ago the Society of Sciences named me a corresponding member. . . . May the dream which we call life be a sweet one for you, a foretaste of the true life in our real home, where the fetters of the slothful body, the barriers of space, the scourges of earthly passions and the mockery of our petty needs and desires no longer oppress the awakened spirit. Let us courageously and without grumbling bear the burden to the end, but never lose sight of that higher goal. Joyfully shall we then lay down the burden when our hour strikes and see the thick curtain fall.
Again on June 20, 1803, to Bolyai:
I wish you good luck, a thousand times, in your son. Truly only he who is a father has full citizen’s rights on the earth. You now have in your hand the first links of fate’s chain of eternal beings continuing on into the infinite. An important and serious, but sweet, calling. May your son some day bless you as the establisher of his well being! . . . Astronomy and pure mathematics are the magnetic poles toward which the compass of my mind ever turns. I am going now to Bremen for a visit with Dr. Olbers, whose friendship I have cultivated up to this time by letters without knowing him personally.
Gauss’ mother had worked for a tanner named Ritter, before she married Gebhard Dietrich in 1776. Two of that name. Friedrich Behrend and Georg Karl Ritter were the godfathers of Carl Friedrich. As a child Gauss had been frequently in the Ritter home. Every Christmas he had found a present there and had otherwise enjoyed himself in the family. After
his return from Göttingen he again took part in the gatherings at Ritter’s house. The happy tone of the group, unassuming but not without some of the better culture then found in the Brunswick middle class, had a strong charm for Gauss in moments of recreation.
In this circle he became acquainted in 1803 with Johanna Elisabeth Rosina Osthoff, the daughter of Christian Ernst Osthoff (1742–1804) and Johanna Maria Christine Ahrenholz (1747–1821). Her father was a master tanner and owned the house at what is now Leopoldstrasse 3, a man of moderate means according to the standards of his position. Johanna, born May 8, 1780 (St. Martin’s Day), was the only child and her parents’ darling. An education in complete contrast to that which Gauss had known had developed in her all the gifts of a happily endowed nature. She was not a dazzling beauty and her letters now and then show a lack of proper schooling. But she was cheerful, unusually kind, happy as a child, charmingly roguish, and gifted with innate understanding. To all who met her she appeared as a creature of light, we are told. Unfortunately no picture of her is extant, but her only daughter, Minna, is said to have been the very image of her.
In a letter dated June 28, 1804, after a paragraph on Borstorf apples and on the whereabouts of old Göttingen friends and professors, and after recommending certain mathematical works, condemning certain astrological superstitions, and commenting on how he enjoyed Hungarian wines, Gauss reported to Bolyai about Johanna:
Since my last letter to you I have made a lot of new acquaintances, some of them extremely interesting. I was in Bremen and Lilienthal for one month with Olbers, one of the most lovable of all men whom I know, and with Schröter, and was four months in Gotha. Here also the circle of my acquaintances and friendships was considerably widened. The most beautiful however, is the friendship of a splendid girl, exactly such a girl as I have always desired for a life companion. A wondrously fair madonna countenance, a mirror of spiritual peace and health, kind, somewhat romantic eyes, a perfect figure and size (that is something), a clear understanding and an intelligent conversation (that is also something), but a quiet, happy, modest, and chaste angelic soul which can harm no one, that is the best. Ostentatious display of flirting and inordinate passion are foreign to her. But I shall not give free rein to my feelings toward this comely creature until I see hope that I can make her just as happy as she deserves. A one-sided happiness is none at all.
Heaven and Hell! I freeze before the picture which you paint of women. What sombre demon guided your pen when it wrote:
“Trust no girl even if she appears as clear as a ray of light, her heart like a crystal spring with a lovely pure crystal bottom, gentle as the soft, cooling evening air in sultry summer. Trust not. The white snow passes away and leaves after it a black muddy filth.”
Those features are not my Johanna’s (her name the same as your son John’s). But your terrible picture can never be applied to her. Be advised, therefore, of even more. I have already known her a year. Indeed I was struck by her quiet virtues as soon as I first saw her, but always observed her very coolly from afar and only recently have I approached her. My conviction of the excellence of her heart is not the result of blinding by passion, but of the most unrestrained observation.
But I stop. If we become more closely related, then you shall find out more of her at the proper time; besides, if heaven wills otherwise, a picture of her has no interest for you.
After a year of active courtship Gauss realized that the possession of her was his highest earthly desire, and on July 12, 1804, opened his heart to her in the following letter, which must always be classed with the gems of German amatory literature:
My very dear friend, accept favorably the fact that in this letter I pour out my heart to you, about an important matter, regarding which I have found no proper opportunity to speak till now.
Finally, let me say from the fullness of my heart, that I have a heart for your silent angelic virtues, an eye for the noble features which make your face a true mirror of these virtues. You, dear modest soul, are so far removed from all vanity that you yourself do not realize your own value; you don’t know how richly and kindly heaven has endowed you. But my heart knows your worth—O! more than it can bear with ease. For a long time it has belonged to you. You won’t repel it? Can you give me yours? Dear, can you grasp the proffered hand, and do it gladly? My happiness hangs on the answer to this question. Indeed, at present, I can’t offer you riches or splendor. Still, dear, I cannot have mistaken your beautiful soul—you are certainly as indifferent to riches and splendor as I am. But I have more than I need for myself alone, enough for two young people to start a carefree, agreeable life, regardless of my prospects for the future. The best that I can offer you is a true heart full of the warmest love for you.
Ask yourself, beloved friend, whether this heart completely satisfies you, whether you can respond with equally sincere feelings, whether you can contentedly make the journey of life hand in hand with me, and decide soon.
I have placed before you, darling, the desires of my heart in artless, but candid words. I could have done it in entirely different words. I could paint for you a portrait of your charms, which, although it would be nothing more than the truth, you would have received as flattery; with burning colors I could make for you a picture of my love—to be sure, I would only need to give rein to my feelings—a portrait of the bliss or disconsolation which await me ever after you have accepted or rejected my desires. But I didn’t want to do that. At least, don’t mistake the purity of my unselfish love. 1 don’t want to bribe your decision. In the gravest concern of your life you must not allow any extraneous considerations to influence you. You are not to bring a sacrifice to my happiness”. Your own happiness alone must guide your decision. Yes, dearest, so warmly do I even love you, that only possession of you can make me happy, provided you are in agreement with me.
Dearest, I have exposed to you my inner heart; passionately and in suspense am I waiting for your decision. With all my heart.
Yours,
c. f. gauss.
Three months passed before an answer was received. Not that Johanna was still uncertain of her feeling for him. She had loved him for a long time; but the loftiness of his personality and the fame which surrounded him had led her to repress her own humble desires. And later something came to her ears which must have aroused doubt. Busy gossip had spread it abroad that another young lady, well educated and of great wealth, was engaged to Gauss. It is not known just how the report started.
For many days Gauss wondered why Johanna was hesitating. A very different sort of scrupulous compunction also engaged his attention. The report was noised abroad that Napoleon would sell the southern portions of Hanover, including Göttingen, to the Elector of Hesse. If this occurred, there was a strong possibility of his being called to Göttingen University. Moreover, things in Brunswick had taken a turn which made his future there look very uncertain, dependent as he was on the bounty of the Duke. In this state of affairs, uncertain of the future, he doubted whether he had the right to tie up the fate of Johanna irrevocably with his own.
Nevertheless the two became engaged on November 22, 1804; and three days later he wrote to Bolyai:
Do apply yourself somewhat to practical astronomy. It is, according to my notion, next to the joys of the heart and the contemplation of truth in pure mathematics, the sweetest enjoyment which we can have on earth.
A second, even more important reason, however, why I delayed my answer somewhat, was that I didn’t want to send it until I could tell you something of myself. I can do that now, dearest Bolyai. For three days that angel, almost too celestial for this earth, has been my fiancée. I am superabundantly happy. You wish that the picture which I sketched for you would be a good one. It is not accurate; it says far too little. Her cardinal trait is a quiet devout soul without one drop of bitterness or sourness. Oh, she is much better than I. I had only one scruple. Not the fear of a negative answer. No, she was always kind to me, consciou
s as I am of my shortcomings; indeed if one becomes better acquainted with most young men, their frivolity and heartlessness, one cannot help taking fresh courage and gaining more confidence in oneself. But it seemed to me that her devout heart was too inaccessible to earthly love, that she could not accept my most patient love, that perhaps she could not respond and that she could not make me really happy. But God, how glad it makes me, because the crust of ice now melts away from her heart in the heat of celestial love, when she chastely snuggles up to my bosom, and her soulful eye, her warm, silken hand, and her delicately formed mouth with maidenly, bashful purity speak nothing but love. Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new glittering colors; not until now do I understand with full clarity the beautiful words of our incomparable poet Jean Paul:
“Wie zwei Selige vor Gott schauen einander in die Augen und in die Herzen: sie reden nicht, um sich anzublicken: sie erheben die Augen, um durch den Freudentropfen durchzuschauen, und senken sie nieder, um ihn mit den Augenlidern abzutrocknen.”
Oh, I had never hoped for this bliss; I am not handsome, not gallant, I have nothing to offer except a candid heart full of devoted love; I despaired of ever finding love.
“Puissances du ciel: j’avais une âme pour la douleur, donnez m’en une pour la félicité,” I would like to exclaim with Rousseau’s St. Preux. How much it affects me, good fellow, that you are not entirely happy. Your noble soul deserves it so very much. May the dissonances which seemed to be bringing discord into your life concert only have seemed to be such, and may they soon resolve themselves into pure consonants of an eternal, celestial harmony.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Titan of Science_A Study of His Life and Work Page 9