is DISQUISITIONES ARITHMETICAE, and
henceforth elected for mathematics. The method of least squares,
was also discovered during his first term. On arriving home the
duke received him in the friendliest manner, and he was promoted to
Helmstedt, where with the assistance of his patron he published his
DISQUISITIONES.

On January 1, 1801, Piazzi, the astronomer of Palermo, discovered a
small planet, which he named CERES FERDINANDIA, and communicated the
news by post to Bode of Berlin, and Oriani of Milan. The letter was
seventy-two days in going, and the planet by that time was lost in the
glory of the sun, By a method of his own, published in his THEORIA MOTUS
CORPORUM COELESTIUM, Gauss calculated the orbit of this planet, and
showed that it moved between Mars and Jupiter. The planet, after eluding
the search of several astronomers, was ultimately found again by Zach on
December 7, 1801, and on January 1, 1802. The ellipse of Gauss was found
to coincide with its orbit.

This feat drew the attention of the Hanoverian Government, and of
Dr. Olbers, the astronomer, to the young mathematician. But some time
elapsed before he was fitted with a suitable appointment. The battle
of Austerlitz had brought the country into danger, and the Duke of
Braunschweig was entrusted with a mission from Berlin to the Court of
St. Petersburg. The fame of Gauss had travelled there, but the duke
resisted all attempts to bring or entice him to the university of that
place. On his return home, however, he raised the salary of Gauss.

At the beginning of October 1806, the armies of Napoleon were moving
towards the Saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of
Auerstadt and Jena were fought and lost. Duke Charles Ferdinand was
mortally wounded, and taken back to Braunschweig. A deputation waited on
the offended Emperor at Halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke
to die in his own house. They were brutally denied by the Emperor,
and returned to Braunschweig to try and save the unhappy duke from
imprisonment. One evening in the late autumn, Gauss, who lived in the
Steinweg (or Causeway), saw an invalid carriage drive slowly out of the
castle garden towards the Wendenthor. It contained the wounded duke on
his way to Altona, where he died on November 10, 1806, in a small house
at Ottensen, 'You will take care,' wrote Zach to Gauss, in 1803, 'that
his great name shall also be written on the firmament.'

For a year and a half after the dea