Gauss had a lively interest in the building and operation of all railroads, although for more than twenty years he had not spent a night away from Göttingen and thus did not know the new improvements from direct experience. On June 16, 1854, he visited the construction of the railroad line between Göttingen and Kassel. Unfortunately, the horses were frightened by a passing locomotive, the coach was turned over, and the coachman was seriously injured. Gauss and Therese were not hurt and returned to the observatory shaken up but otherwise uninjured.
Through the newspapers Gauss learned about the death on May 21, 1854, of his old friend Bernhard von Lindenau. He was painfully affected by the report and his friends avoided talking about it, but he kept returning to the subject and reminisced about the long years of their friendship. He considered Lindenau’s character to be noble and unselfish, and thought that the success of his diplomatic activity was to be ascribed to this. In these conversations he did not seem to think of the nearness of his own death. Lindenau had last visited Gauss on July 26, 1849.
On July 31, 1854, occurred the official opening of the railroad line between Göttingen and Hanover. It was a fine summer day and Gauss felt well enough to go into the city and observe the festivities from various vantage points. In 1936 Baron August Sartorius von Waltershausen of Gauting near Munich, then eighty-four years old, a son of Gauss’ intimate friend and colleague Baron Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, still remembered how Gauss held him in his arms so that he could see the passing train. At the time he was nearly three years old. This was the last day on which Gauss’ friends saw him in fairly good health.
Gauss survived the intimate friends of his youth in Brunswick. During his last years his only remaining close tie with the city of his birth was his brother Johann Georg Heinrich and family. The brother died on August 7, 1854, aged eighty-six, and Gauss wrote to his nephew immediately:
I have received with heartfelt sympathy the sad news of your letter of the 8th. It was grievous for me that for several years I had remained without any news of my brother. As long as Professor Goldschmidt lived, I always had some connection with Brunswick, since he was accustomed to journey there a couple of times a year to his father, who was then still living, and then always made inquiry about the health of my brother and communicated with me. Professor Goldschmidt has been dead now for several years, just as all the friends of my youth there. It is the fate of man when one gets old. I am already in my 78th year, but I shall not equal my brother, since for a year I have been feeling the loss of strength.
I am unusually glad that I must conclude from your letter that the last years of my brother’s life were eased as much as the course of affairs allowed, by the true care of your mother, to whom I ask you to convey my hearty sympathy and greetings.
I myself have not seen my native city again for 33 years and even then only for one day. Now the journey is considerably shortened by the train, because one can go there from here via Hildesheim or Hanover in six or seven hours, and I suppose in one or two years, when the side line is opened, in half the time. Whether I will survive until that moment, or whether my strength will permit me to make use of the train, in order to see my native city just once again, is questionable. But it always remains my sincere wish that everything may be well with you and yours.
In the fall of 1854 Gauss’ illness got worse from week to week. An earlier symptom, swelling of the feet, became aggravated, but Gauss did not seem to regard it as dangerous. Finally he had to stay in the house and could not take his short daily walk to the literary museum. Owing to increasing asthma he could walk about his home only with great effort. On December 7, 1854, alarming symptoms were manifested, and Dr. Baum feared that he would not live through the night, but the will to live was strong, and after a good night’s rest Gauss expressed the hope that he could soon return to his usual order. He seemed to be much better.
Dropsy now developed, and conversation became so difficult that he had to decline visits from his intimate friends. Baum and his daughter Therese were the only ones who saw him during the last weeks. Although Gauss was not able to carry on any of his usual work, he was still mentally active, still read extensively, and did some writing at his desk. His handwriting, usually so fine and neat, had become shaky. In December, 1854, he wrote his will. On account of asthma he spent the last days and nights in his big easy chair. During the last thirty hours he was at times delirious and at other times in a coma.
His friend Sartorius, as was his wont, visited Gauss on New Year’s Eve, 1854. He found him in good spirits but left with the feeling that the end was near. During the first week of January, 1855, he was suffering greatly but still hoped for the restoration of his health. On January 5 he wrote to Otto Praël, the university’s superintendent of buildings and grounds, the following note, probably the last thing he ever wrote, concerning repairs in his home to be made in the spring:
To your honored letter of December 21 last year I have the honor of replying that, of repairs about which I am competent to judge, at the moment I can name only one, that in the wainscoting of my living room through drying of the wood openings have originated through which one can stick his hand. Probably new paint for the woodwork in the room and new paint for the walls will then also have to be connected with the repair of this defect. Most devotedly,
gauss
After the illness had vacillated back and forth several times Sartorius saw Gauss again on January 14. Christian Heinrich Hesemann (1815–1856), pupil of Rauch and official court sculptor in Hanover, had just arrived on orders of the King, in order to make a medallion of Gauss. He was told that he could start work the following day. Hesemann died suddenly on May 29, 1856, and C. Dopmeyer, another sculptor in Hanover, completed this medallion, which was later placed on Gauss’ tombstone. This medallion or plaque was the basis of the medal which the King ordered just after the death of Gauss. The seventy-millimeter medal was produced at Hanover by Friedrich Brehmer (1815–1889), a well-known German sculptor and medalist. Sartorius found Gauss in a serious condition but in good spirits. His blue eyes sparkled.
On February 21, 1855, Sartorius again saw Gauss soon after noon, but only for a few moments. His consciousness was clear, but a great change had occurred, and his friend realized that death was hovering near. Sartorius pressed his hand for the last time and left the room. Soon after noon on February 22, Gauss suffered the last heart attack, then toward evening he seemed to be better, and consciousness had not left him although his eyes were closed. He heard everything that was going on around him, asked who was present in the room, and requested a drink of water. His intimate friends sat in an adjoining room and hoped for a better night. His heart was still beating, but the intervals between heartbeats became longer and longer; his breathing became more and more quiet. At 1:05 a.m. on February 23, 1855, he peacefully breathed his last. Sartorius reports the almost incredible incident that Gauss’ pocket watch, which he had carried most of his life and which an astronomer does not easily forget to wind, stopped at a few minutes after one. During his illness it had been carefully kept going.
When King George V of Hanover visited the observatory on April 27, 1865, he ordered a large copper tablet placed over the door of the room in which Gauss died. The inscription reads thus:
Carl Friedrich Gauss closed his earthly life in this room, the scene of his forty years of activity, on February 23, 1855, in the arms of his own. From here his immortal spirit ascended to heaven, in order to contemplate pure truth there in eternal light, whose mysterious doctrines he strove with holy seriousness to decipher here below from the starry writing of the firmament. In order royally to honor his famous memory at the scene of his activity and his death King George V ordered the erection of this tablet during his visit at the Georgia Augusta on April 27, 1865.
At the news of his death his intimate friends and close acquaintances hurried to the observatory. They found him in his big easy chair, both hands resting on his knees, his feet ex
tended, and his imposing head of silver-gray hair sunk to his chest. The feeling of peace was dominant and impressed them. They were touched to see Therese at his feet; she was parting his silvery locks, weeping, kissing and caressing his forehead as though she wanted to call him back to life. Absolute silence prevailed, tears unheeded bathing their faces.
With permission of the family a careful autopsy was performed the day after his death. Those participating were Dr. Baum, Listing, Wagner, and Professors Förster,128 Fuchs,129 and Henle.130 The skull and brain were carefully weighed and measured. Wagner reported that the brains of Gauss and Dirichlet (d. 1859) were equipped with very rich and deep convolutions, the most remarkable he had observed. The frontal convolutions were especially noteworthy. Specific forms and arrangements did not occur. Wagner regretted that he could not compare the brain of Gauss with that of Laplace.131 Gauss’ brain showed no unusually great mass development. With the meninges it weighed 1,492 grams; after the meninges, the water infiltration, and certain blood vessels had been removed, it weighed 1,410 grams. The weight was considerable if we consider that Gauss was a man of medium stature, that he was seventy-eight years old, and that atrophia senilis had already set in. The brains of Byron and Cuvier were heavier, 63,8 ounces and 64 ounces respectively. Dante’s brain weighed 50,2 ounces. Robert Gauss, brilliant Denver, Colorado, newspaper editor and grandson of Carl Friedrich, at his death in 1913 left instructions for his brain to be weighed and studied. This was carried out, and it was found to weigh 55,7 ounces, three ounces heavier than that of his grandfather, and exactly equal to the weight of Schiller’s brain. The brains of Gauss and Dirichlet are preserved in the department of physiology at Göttingen.
The sculptor Hesemann was summoned by telegram from Hanover and made a death mask and an accurate cast of the whole head and the inner surface of the skull. He later made the heroic-size white marble bust of Gauss for the university library. Alexander von Humboldt considered it the best likeness of Gauss. Several sketches and measurements of the entire body were made with the idea of using them in future monuments. A local photographer, Phillipp Petri, was called in and made four daguerreotypes, two showing the head and shoulders, and two the entire figure in death. Three of these pictures have disappeared.
On February 25 Gauss spent the last night in his room. His intimate friends laid him out in his academic robe with its purple velvet trimming in a simple black coffin costing fifty-eight thalers. A laurel crown was bound around his head, and early spring flowers surrounded his silent figure. Early on the morning of February 26 his body lay in state in the rotunda of the observatory under the dome. Among the visitors were many who had never seen him in life. Church bells tolled and reminded the citizens of Göttingen that their greatest son was about to be laid to rest. The coffin was surrounded by cypress, and two branches of palms were inclined toward the body. Twelve candelabra poured out a solemn light over him.
At nine o’clock twelve students of mathematics and science (including Dedekind) carried the coffin out on the open stone terrace of the observatory where a large and distinguished group had assembled. Among those present were his daughter Therese, his son Joseph and family, his son-in-law Ewald, Regierungsrat Adolf von Warnstedt (1813–1897) of Hanover, curator of the university, most professors and students, members of the city council, and a vast multitude of friends, neighbors, and admirers.
The choir now sang Luther’s great hymn “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,” with its rude tone of combative faith:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our Helper He,
Amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work his woe:
His craft and power are great.
And armed with cruel hate
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide.
Our striving would be losing,
Were not the right man on our side.
The men of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus it is he.
Lord Sabaoth his name.
From age to age the same.
And he must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled.
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim.
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure.
For lo! his doom is sure.
One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly powers.
No thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go.
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still.
His kingdom is forever.
Ewald then delivered the first funeral sermon, and Sartorius gave the second sermon (see Chapter XXIV). The coffin was closed and carried down to the hearse, and a long procession slowly moved to a beautiful, shaded spot in St. Albans cemetery a few blocks away. There the Reverend Dr. Sarnighausen, associate pastor of St. Albans Church, pronounced the benediction. After the coffin had been lowered into the grave, it was covered with palms and laurel. Nearby is a picturesque pond with well-shaded banks; on it graceful white swans glide slowly about. An impressive monument costing 750 thalers was erected in 1859 by Gauss’ children. Ivy soon covered the lot. Beside him are buried both wives, his son Louis, and his mother, although no separate tombstones mark their graves.
The person most deeply affected by Gauss’ death was his daughter Therese, to whom he was so tenderly attached. It was she who had been his constant companion for three decades, had kept house for him, and nursed him. On May 16, 1855, she wrote to her brother Eugene in Missouri:
my dear eugene,
Your letter in which you kindly express your feelings for me so sympathetically on the loss of our father, before I was able to write you myself, has touched me deeply and I thank you with all my heart for the words of brotherly sentiment. The benefit of all love shown me, especially by the few who through the dear departed still have a closer connection on earth with me, I feel so very much in my inner impoverishment, even though no consolation and no substitute can be brought for that which I have lost; for with the earthly separation from father everything is indeed extinguished, in which and for which I have lived! It is not so much the external emptiness and desolation now surrounding me, by which the feeling of loneliness is forced so inexpressibly painfully into my soul, as rather the pain for a torn inner life relationship which existed so richly, so holy, so fervently between father and me, as perhaps exists only seldom between two human beings on earth. The secluded quiet life with him and for him was my world, in which every passing year moved me more ardently and closely to him, made me richer in all that his warm, tender heart, his intimate confidence, his splendid, eternally fresh spirit poured out to me! My whole existence was tied up in father and as I believed I could not live without him, so he believed he could not live without me. He so often told me and I have found in it my happiest consciousness, that according to his feeling it was something deeply intimate and more than mere habit which bound us so closely and firmly together in life, that the thought of a voluntary separation appeared inconceivable to him as well as to me. Since grandmother’s death I did not leave him even for one day; I was homesick even if I was away from him only several hours! The last year of suffering, full of sickness demanding constant attendance, bound me still more closely to him; the last weeks had scarcely a moment when he permitted me to be away from him, and he expressed the desire that we might not be separated even by death, for only a few days before he died he said to me: “The best a
nd greatest that God could grant both of us would be the one thing: that we might die together on one day.” At first I believed that my own longing would also quickly pull me after him; but the corporeal bond holds too tightly to be torn asunder without physical necessity, and thus years and years may pass in which I must learn to bear the inner isolation. For I shall remain inwardly lonesome, wherever I may turn; half of my existence rests in the grave and although I am resigned and very quiet and peaceful in the suffering, yet I feel more deeply with every passing day that father’s death has made a cleft in my innermost life, which nothing, not even time, can heal again.
My dear Eugene, the fact that I did not write you for a long time, that I left your letter of April, 1854, unanswered, had its reason in my painful mood, in the continuous change between hope and fear in his sickness. I didn’t know what I should write you, for I would have reproached myself for expressed hopelessness at the first appearance of improvement, and yet that (appearance) never gave me enough hopeful courage to write.
My last letter to you, dated, I believe, April 30, 1853, is two years old, and if at that time I wrote that father’s health was no longer quite robust, it nevertheless did not cause any unusual anxiety. But in the course of the summer following he began to complain to such an extent as to cause alarm. Part of the time he suffered much, and, his strength failing rapidly, I, full of apprehension, besought him in vain to call in a physician. Not till January, 1854, as the disease in a few weeks had made rapid progress, did he consent. The physician, who has since with unremitting love, care, and sympathy attended him, lessened his suffering where cure was impossible, and doubtless somewhat prolonged his life, declared to me positively, after his first visit, that his condition was dangerous and hopeless. He recognized the disease at once as a heart condition, which probably had been coming on for years, in course of which there had been an accumulation of water around the heart, which in a few weeks also extended to other parts of the body. At that time the disease advanced rapidly and left little hope, but under the careful treatment of our loving physician, Dr. Baum, some improvement followed like a miracle. Some symptoms of the disease disappeared entirely, and father was able to go out for short distances, though only slowly and with immediate exhaustion. Mr. Angelrodt’s erroneous reports of his health, which he gathered perhaps superficially at the hotel and communicated to you, may be based on these facts. But suddenly in November the old trouble returned in more decisive form, increased from day to day, and at the beginning of the present year the physician said to me that the life of our beloved one would be of only short duration. The last weeks of suffering were terrible, as the disease of dropsy in general is terrible, because it visibly approaches death inch by inch. But father bore all his suffering to the end with unvarying, touching serenity, friendliness, and patience. Entirely hopeless he never was; he always believed in the possibility of recovery as long as one spoke encouragingly to him. Ah! how difficult this has often been, when I, hopeless, knew the nearness of death! He never lost complete consciousness. Four hours before his death he still knew me, when, for the last time, he took a drink from my hand, drew my hand toward him and, kissing it, looked lovingly at me. He then closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, but I believe he did not sleep, but that his spirit, clear and conscious as ever, had freed itself from its earthly shell and had gone to its heavenly home.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Titan of Science_A Study of His Life and Work Page 37