The story of Gaussian sums. Stories of other mathematicians. Plus something else (I run a math newspaper)

Gauss was the son of an ordinary couple. His mother, the daughter of a poor stonemason, was very intelligent but uneducated, bordering on illiterate. She worked as a maid before she became the second wife of Gosse's father. His father worked as a gardener, a foreman, a merchant's assistant and an appraiser for a small insurance company. That Goss was able to correct his father's debit accounts when he was three years old has become an anecdote passed down to this day. He once said that he learned to calculate on a McShaney's pile. Being able to perform complex calculations in his mind was a life-long God-given talent. Gauss calculated in a very short time the task assigned by his elementary school teacher: summing the natural numbers from 1 to 100. The method he used was to sum the series of 50 pairs of numbers constructed as a sum 101 as (1 + 100, 2 + 99, 3 + 98 ......), and to obtain the result: 5050. In that year, Gauss was 9 years old. But according to more elaborate mathematical history books, Gauss solved not simply 1 added to 100, but 81297 + 81495 + ...... +100899 (tolerance 198, the number of terms 100) of an isotropic series

Descartes Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in Toulon, France, in the city of Layre, a noble family, Descartes's father was a member of the local council of Brittany, but also the magistrate's court judge, one year old, his mother died, leaving Descartes with an inheritance for the future, he was engaged in their favorite work Descartes lived in luxury. Descartes lived a carefree childhood in luxury. He was weak and sickly at an early age and was looked after by a nanny after his mother's death. He was so curious about his surroundings that his father, recognizing that he had the temperament of a philosopher, affectionately called him "the little philosopher". His father hoped that Descartes would become a theologian in the future, so when Descartes was eight years old, he was sent to the Jesuit school in La fleche (Lavrais) to receive a classical education. In order to take care of his weak health, the school authorities allowed him to read in bed without being bound by the school rules and without having to go to school in the morning. As a result, he developed the habit of being quiet and reflective from an early age. He studied at the school for eight years and received a traditional cultural education, reading classical literature, history, theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, mathematics and other natural sciences. But he was disappointed with what he learned, because in his opinion the subtle arguments in the textbooks were in fact nothing more than ambiguous or even contradictory theories, which could only make him doubtful without any conclusive knowledge, and the only thing that gave him comfort was mathematics. At the end of his studies he resolved that he would no longer study books, but would consult "the great book of the world". So he decided to avoid the war, far away from the social city, to find a suitable environment for research

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