Alphabetical Index Index by Year of Birth Carl Friedrich Gauss
Heptadecagon of Carl Friedrich Gauss
* 1777 in Braunschweig
+ 1855 in Göttingen
 Heptadecagon Stadtfriedhof Göttingen mein Foto 2.9.2022 The "Nobell-Rondell", a heptadecagon
(17-gon) erected in 2006, is showing panels for Alfred Nobel and
eight Nobel Prize Laureates buried in the city cemetery
(Stadtfriedhof) of Göttingen:
Manfred Eigen, Max Born, Otto Hahn, Adolf Windaus, Richard Zsigmondy, Walter Nernst, Max Planck, Max von Laue, Otto Wallach. The formula for cos(360°/17) used by Gauss to construct a heptadecagon [1]:  On March 30, 1796, one month before his
nineteenth birthday, Carl Friedrich Gauss made the first
entry in his notebook:
„Pricipia quibus innititur sectio circuli, ac
divisibilitas geometrica in septemdecim partes etc“ [2].LibreOffice spreadsheet:  The formula includes
- integer numbers only - square roots - basic operations + - * / only which all can be constructed by ruler and compass (details in [3]). The graphical construction is also possible for n = 3, 5, 17, 257, 65537 (Fermat primes) [1]: 
|
| Links |
| [1] Carl Friedrich Gauss
"Disquisitiones
Arithmeticae" eod books2ebooks, p. 662 item 365. [2] Duane W. DeTemple: Carlyle Circles and the Lemoine Simplicity of Polygon Constructions; The American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 98, Issue 2, Feb. 1991, p. 97-108 Heptadecagon (Wikipedia) |
| Books |
| [3] Hans Vollmayr: Gleiche Ecken und Kanten
mit Zirkel und Lineal; in: "Wie der Blitz einschlägt, hat
sich das Räthsel gelöst", Niedersächsische Staats- und
Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-930457-72-5,
p. 90-104 |
J. Giesen
Sept. 2022
