What did Gauss read in the appendix? (Q452116): Difference between revisions

This work is a substantial contribution to the long-standing historical question concerning Gauss's contribution to non-Euclidean geometry. The authors address the issue of Gauss's non-reaction to Janos Bolyai's foundational 1832 appendix to one of his father's mathematical works. Though Gauss recognized Bolyai's work as having surpassed his own attempts to develop a new geometry, he not only stopped his own work on the topic but also failed to publicly acknowledge the priority and importance of Bolyai's. The authors make the case that this was because Gauss almost exclusively directed his research at trying to find the ``imaginary sphere'' example of a non-Euclidean geometry, an idea first raised by Lambert in 1786. Though, as a consequence Gauss's work in differential geometry, in particular intrinsic curvature of surfaces, came very close to some of the key ideas found in Bolyai, Gauss's goal of finding this particular surface of constant negative curvature, for him necessarily embedded in Euclidean space, was only later proven to be impossible (by Hilbert in 1901). However insightful this proposed reconstruction of Gauss's program is, contrary to the authors' expectations it may not fully answer the question of why he did not publish a review of Bolyai's work. The traditional explanation -- Gauss's fear of the Kantians -- is dismissed by the authors in one sentence as simply not convincing.