The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Carl Friedrich Gauss

    A German mathematician (1777 - 1855), one of all time
   greatest.  Gauss discovered the method of least squares and
   Gaussian elimination.

   Gauss was something of a child prodigy; the most commonly told
   story relates that when he was 10 his teacher, wanting a rest,
   told his class to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100.  Gauss
   did it in seconds, having noticed that 1+...+100 = 100+...+1 =
   (101+...+101)/2.

   He did important work in almost every area of mathematics.
   Such eclecticism is probably impossible today, since further
   progress in most areas of mathematics requires much hard
   background study.

   Some idea of the range of his work can be obtained by noting
   the many mathematical terms with "Gauss" in their names.  E.g.
   Gaussian elimination (linear algebra); Gaussian primes
   (number theory); Gaussian distribution (statistics); Gauss
   [unit] (electromagnetism); Gaussian curvature (differential
   geometry); Gaussian quadrature (numerical analysis);
   Gauss-Bonnet formula (differential geometry); Gauss's
   identity (hypergeometric functions); Gauss sums (number
   theory).

   His favourite area of mathematics was number theory.  He
   conjectured the Prime Number Theorem, pioneered the theory
   of quadratic forms, proved the quadratic reciprocity
   theorem, and much more.

   He was "the first mathematician to use complex numbers in a
   really confident and scientific way" (Hardy & Wright, chapter
   12).

   He nearly went into architecture rather than mathematics; what
   decided him on mathematics was his proof, at age 18, of the
   startling theorem that a regular N-sided polygon can be
   constructed with ruler and compasses if and only if N is a
   power of 2 times a product of distinct Fermat primes.

   (1995-04-10)