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Carl Friedrich Gauss

A portrait of Carl Friedrich Gauss, a distinguished German mathematician, wearing a dark suit and sporting a full white beard and mustache, set against a dark background.

German mathematician (1777–1855), often ranked with Archimedes and Newton. His work touched number theory, statistics, astronomy, geodesy and electromagnetism. In 1831 he proved a restricted form of the honeycomb conjecture, showing the hexagon optimal among convex tilings. The full proof, removing the convexity restriction, eluded him and everyone after him for the better part of two centuries.

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