A neglected note showing Gauss at work (Q1117909)

The paper is concerned with the `neglected' seventieth entry in Gauss' notebook Gauss made in 1797. Gauss made a conjecture on cyclotomic norms, which he subsequently disproved; the disproof is only slightly sketched. The author reconstructs the line of thought of the great mathematician and tests some possibilities for disproving the conjecture. One sees the day-to-day work of Gauss lying behind his great publications, in this case those `Disquisitiones Arithmeticae' of 1801. It is a bit difficult to understand why the paper's topic restricts the interested reader to the current mathematics at the time of Gauss, but only in this way one can rationally reconstruct his way of research. On this point the author gives various notes and remarks beside modern formulations. The paper culminates in proving a `theorem' which states that the 3 special cases leading Gauss to his conjecture on primitive roots of unity are the only ones where his conjecture holds. This fits into the framework of the article whereby the author emphasizes the algebraical outlines and treats Gauss' manner of doing research rather marginally, to the extent that Gauss' work allows scrutiny. For Gauss was the kind of scientist who camouflaged the painstaking effort of research and would not present its results until they were immaculate; hence this entry in discussion is just a rarity. Gauss assumed a possible algebraical form and realized soon the one he had found was none. For seeing the object read the paper in reference.