Denver, Colorado, September 3, 1912.
Professor Doctor Felix Klein,
Gottingen, Germany.
My dear Dr. Klein:
I am a grandson of Carl Friedrich Gauss. My father was Eugene
Gauss who was the eldest son of the mathematician by his second wife.
Upon several occasions I corresponded with Professor Brendell, at that
time in Gottingen, in regard to the preparation of the biography of
my grandfather. Since he left Gottingen - which I believe he did
about five years ago - I have heard but little concerning the progress
of work on the biography; but from something I heard several months
ago, I am led to believe that it is approaching completion.
I believe you are the head of the committee of scientific men who have
been engaged in publishing a complete edition of my grandfather's works.
So I take the liberty of addressing you concerning a matter of great
interest to the American descendants of Carl Friedrich Gauss, and particularly
to the children and grandchildren of Eugene Gauss.
I hope this will reach you in time to enable you, if you see proper
to do so, to give the information I shall impart its proper place in
my grandfather's biography. I assume that in that biography, you
will say something about his children, if not about his later descendants.
In a little work by Professor R. Kistner, entitled "Deutsche Physiker
und Chemiker" published in Munchen, I notice a brief sketch
of my grandfather's life, which contains a reference to my father, Eugene
Gauss, in the following words:
"Der Tod der zweiten Frau (1831), Zerwurfnisse mit dem miszratenen
Sohne Eugen machten Gauss Schwere Sorgen."
Little is known in Germany about the two sons of Carl Friedrich Gauss
who emigrated to this country and the German speaking world knows nothing
of my father except that when he was about nineteen years old he quarreled
with his father and left Gottingen to make his home in the United States.
In that way he disappeared, as it were, in darkness. Hence it
is I think the duty of one of his children, or of some one else who
knew him in this country, to lift that veil of darkness and show what
his life in America really was.
I hope you will be able to find a little space in the biography of my
grandfather in which to show the German reading public that the son
referred to by Professor Kistner as "miszratenen" was not
a failure. This would be more than just to his memory, as well
as pleasing to his children and all the other descendants of Carl Friedrich
Gauss.
From what I am about to state you will see that the need of an explanation
of this kind was brought forcibly to my attention only a short time
ago. I am sure that you know by reputation, if not personally,
Mr. George Bruce Halsted, who has given much attention to the study
of Non-Euclidean Geometry, a branch of mathematics in which you have
taken great interest. If I am correct in this, you are aware that he
has been a great champion of John Bolyai. For some reason this
has developed in him a spirit of antagonism to my grandfather and led
him into a very unjust attack upon him. In the January number
for this year of "The American Mathematical Monthly" he had
an article in which he declared that John Bolyai was a victim of "the
meanness of Gauss". To this he added that one of Gauss' own
sons also was a victim of this "meanness", and that he had
spent his life an exile in the State of Colorado.
Professor Florian Cajori of Colorado Springs in this State, wrote me
after reading Professor Halsted's article. he knew that the reference
could only be to Eugene Gauss, my father. It happened that Professor
Halsted at the time his article appeared was connected with the State
Normal School in Greeley, Colorado. Greeley is a town about fifty
miles north of Denver. I promptly replied to Professor Cajori
that my father was in no sense an exile from his home in Gottingen,
and furthermore, that he had never been in the State of Colorado.
I need not go into this matter further in this letter, for it is all
fully explained in my correspondence with Professor Cajori; and I enclose
herewith a copy of that correspondence. It contains copies of
the letters received from Professor Cajori, and my answers to them.
If you will read the enclosed correspondence you will see that I have
given a full account of my father's life after he left Gottingen up
to the time that he settled in St. Charles, Missouri, where he married
and where all of his children were born. My mother's maiden name
was Henrietta Fawcett. she was a native of the United States.
The enclosed letters also show the circumstances under which my father
left Gottingen, and I think they are a complete vindication of my grandfather
against the charge made by Halsted that he had "meanly" treated
my father. This material will be of use to you in preparing the
statement I hope you will embody in the biography of my grandfather
concerning my father's career. But you need a little more.
You need a statement of what his life was after he settled in St. Charles,
Missouri, and how he was looked upon by the people among whom he lived.
Only by this means can it be shown that the charge that he turned out
a failure or "went wrong" (miszratenen) was not true.
I am fully convinced that my father inherited more of his father's mathematical
talent and his intellectual qualities in general than any of the other
sons. Although he left Gottingen before he had completed his course
of studies, he was nevertheless a well educated man, with very pronounced
intellectual tastes. After settling in the town of St. Charles,
in the State of Missouri, my father went into business. During
the greater part of his residence there he was engaged in the limber
trade. Under the circumstances his intellectual life was almost
entirely distinct from his business vocation. Yet he was known
throughout the community as a man of superior education and intellectual
qualities. He collected a good private library and to a large
extent his life was spent among his books. Unfortunately - because
he had distinctly a mathematical mind - his studies did not take him
into the field of the exact sciences.
A few years after making his home in St. Charles he became deeply interested
in the subject of religion. He became a member of the Presbyterian Church,
and his private library was to a large extent one which a theologian
might have collected, so many were the works on religious and theological
subjects.
Whatever fondness for the gay life of a Gottingen student he may have
had in his young days, his life in America was almost ascetic in its
freedom from anything like dissipation. when he first made his
home in St. Charles, Missouri, he was about thirty years of age, and
it was only a few years later that he became interested in the subject
of religion. So it could not have been said of him: "Junge
sundet unt Alte beteschwestern". He was still a young man
when he turned his attention to religion. Thereafter he lived
in strict conformity to the precepts of the Presbyterian Church and
he was held in high esteem by all who know him. His reputation
was that of a man of the strictest business and personal integrity and
his life was a model of moral conduct and devotion to the discharge
of duty.
In 1885 he removed from St. Charles to a farm which he purchased in
the central part of the State of Missouri, near the town of Columbia.
He continued to reside there until his death on July 4, 1896.
He was born July 29, 1811. during the latter part of his life
he was almost totally blind, and on that account he was unable to read.
While in that condition and a little over eighty years of age, he made
a calculation of what one dollar would amount to at compound interest
at six per cent in the space of six thousand years. The mathematical
memory which this calculation involved was so remarkable that Professor
Florian Cajori, of whom I have already spoken, made special comment
upon it in an article which appeared in a journal called "Science"
as follows:
"Carl Friedrich Gauss and His Children", in Science, N. S.,
Vol. IX., 1899, pp. 697-704.
To say the least his memory must have been wonderfully tenacious to
make this calculation mentally, retaining in his mind the long array
of figures which the result called for. How long he was employed
in amusing himself with this calculation, I do not know, for I left
home and removed to Colorado long before that time. But during
the whole process his memory obtained no other aid than that three or
four times he had one of my brothers make a memorandum, which I suppose
was used as a kind of resting-place in the calculation.
I am very sure that Professor Cajori sent you a copy of the article
printed in "Science" to which I have just referred, and that
it probably may be found among papers in Gottingen pertaining to my
grandfather. If, however, that copy can not be found, and the
Gottingen library contains no copies of the magazine (Science) I shall
endeavor to procure you a copy; for I think it would be of interest
to you to possess the information it contains concerning my father's
intellectual qualities.
I believe that the information contained in the enclosed correspondence
with professor Cajori, and what I have related concerning my father's
manner of life after he made his home in St. Charles, Missouri, will
supply you with all the material needed for a brief biography, which
you are about to publish. I shall be greatly indebted to you if
you will do this justice to my father's memory.
I should not close this part of my letter without saying something about
my father's brother William, who also came to the United States.
He left Germany entirely with the consent of his father, about 1837.
Shortly after his departure from the Fatherland he married a niece of
Bessel, the great astronomer. He had made a special study of agriculture
because he expected to engage in that industry in this country..
He first settled in St. Charles County, Missouri, which is the same
county in which the town of St. Charles is situated. That, however,
was several years before my father settled in that town. My uncle remained
in St. Charles county only a short time and then removed to the vicinity
of a town named Glasgow, in the central part of Missouri. He continued
to reside in that neighborhood for about fifteen years, where most of
his children were born. In 1855 he removed to St. Louis, Missouri, and
engaged in business. He continued to live in that city until 1879,
in which year he died. He became one of the most prominent business
men in St. Louis and when he died, left a very considerable estate.
He was highly esteemed as a man of ability and the strictest business
and personal integrity. There was a very warm attachment between
him and his father, as may be seen by the letters which they exchanged.
My uncle had eight children, one of whom died in infancy and two of
them after reaching maturity. His oldest son, named Carl Friedrich,
is now living in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, where he is a leading
and exceptionally wealthy business man. another son, William T. Gauss,
lives in Colorado Springs in the State of Colorado, and I think that
you have had with him some correspondence. My father also had
eight children, two of whom died in infancy and one after reaching maturity.
Four sons, of whom I am one, and a daughter, are still living.
Permit me now to discuss briefly another feature of the biography of
my grandfather. It is one which I think will be of special interest
to persons who know his career, but who are not themselves mathematicians.
When they read the lives of men like Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, Bismarck
and even Kant, people of ordinary intelligence may form some idea of
what existence meant for those great men, and what lessons their lives
convey to humanity. But how shall an ordinary man who is not a
mathematician draw inspiration for a philosophy of life or an understanding
of life's meaning and purpose from the career of one whose time was
given almost exclusively to the study of so exact a science as mathematics?
I am reminded in this connection of something that Lotze said in his
introduction to his "Microcosmus", and I take the liberty
of copying it here from an English translation, as follows:
"If the object of all human investigation were
but to produce in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists,
of what value would be all its labour and pains, which could result
only in vain repetition, in an imitation within the soul of that
which exists without it? What significance could there be
in this barren rehearsal - what should oblige thinking minds to
be mere mirrors of that which does not think, unless the discovery
of truth were in all cases likewise the production of some good,
valuable enough to justify the pains expended in attaining it?
The individual, ensnared by that division of intellectual labour
that inevitably results from the widening compass of knowledge,
may at times forget the connection of his narrow sphere of work
with the great ends of human life; it may at times seem to him as
though the furtherance of knowledge for the sake of knowledge were
an intelligible and worthy aim or human effort. But all his
endeavors have in the last resort but this one meaning, that they,
in connection with those of countless others, should combine to
trace an image of the world from which we may learn what we have
to reverence as the true significance of existence, what we have
to do and what to hope."
What answer does my grandfather's philosophy of life give to the inquiry
which is embodied in the closing words of this quotation from Lotze?
I have personally a fairly clear understanding of what that answer is,
but I venture to say that this can not be said of the general public
or of a majority even among those people who have some knowledge of
his rank and place in the history of science.
I hope you will not think me guilty of intrusion in suggesting that
a somewhat elaborate discussion of my grandfather's views of the problems
of life, of government, of religion, of the social order and of history
would be of great interest. It might show what in his opinion,
we have, to use the words of Lotze, "to reverence as the true significance
of existence, what we have to do and what to hope".
I should have said that Professor Cajori wrote an answer to Halsted's
attack upon my grandfather in relation to Bolyai and conclusively refuted
it. In that article he also made some reference to my father and
to my father's brother William, who also, as I have said, came to the
United States and who died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1879. This
article by Professor Cajori appeared in the August number, this year,
of "The Popular Science monthly", and I shall take great pleasure
in sending you a copy of it. This, you will understand, is not
the article referred to above and which appeared in "Science",
but in case you have not, I shall try to procure one for you.
With the greatest respect,
Yours most sincerely,
Robert Gauss
P. S.
The names and the present places of residence of the grandchildren of
Carl Friedrich Gauss, who were born in the Untied States and are now
living, are as follows:
The children of Eugene Gauss:
Charles Henry Gauss, St. Charles, Missouri; Robert Gauss, Denver, Colorado;
Albert F. Gauss, Los Angeles, California.
The children of William Gauss:
Charles Friedrich Gauss, St. Louis, Missouri; Oscar W. Gauss, Greeley,
Colorado; Mary Gauss, St. Louis, Missouri; William T. Gauss, Colorado
Springs, Colorado; Joseph Gauss, St. Louis, Missouri.
The only one of the great-grandchildren of Carl Friedrich Gauss born
in the United States, who has ever visited Germany is Helen W. Gauss,
daughter of William T. Gauss of Colorado Springs, Colorado. while
in Germany last year she was present at the dedication of the Gauss
tower on the Hohenhagen.