Gauss worked for decades without mathematical peers. Jacobi, Abel, and Galois appeared too late: his solitary habits were deeply ingrained.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps
Oh, you mean working alone? Newton did more than that. After getting trolled early on, he stopped even wanting to publish.
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Replying to @paulg @MathPrinceps
The accounts I've read attribute spitefulness to newton's reticence to publish. Is that true. Gauss seems more hopeless than spiteful.
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Replying to @jamechristie @paulg
Newton's reticence to publish and his ruthless hostility toward perceived opponents were distinct impulses. He didn't care to be understood.
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The key contrast to make is between Newton and Euler. Euler genuinely wanted to be understood. Newton was content to understand for himself.
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Newton really took notice of his contemporaries only when he believed them to be attempting to usurp credit for his own achievements.
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Or attempting to impede him in his pursuit of those achievements -- as happened with the unfortunate (and legitimately aggrieved) Flamsteed.
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Newton was jealous of his priority; he was vain and prideful, too. He was not content to refute his rivals, but needed to humiliate them.
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His principal passion, though, was for investigation. His work consumed orders of magnitude more of his time than his polemical activities.
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Gauss really is a tragic figure. Had his beloved wife survived, he might have become a vastly more optimistic, open-hearted man.
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Johannes Brahms wrote his Alto Rhapsody almost fifteen years after Gauss' death; but it might be Gauss' epitaph.http://bit.ly/2ya9aQb
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