Classic inspirational story: ignorant fearless

Classic inspirational story: ignorant fearless

There are things that we can often do better when we don't know how hard it is. This is what people often say is ignorant.

One day in 1796, at the University of Göttingen, Germany, a 19-year-old young man with a mathematical talent finished his dinner and began to work on his three routine mathematics questions that he had separately assigned to his mentor.

As usual, the first two questions were successfully completed within two hours. The third question is written on a small piece of paper. It is required to make a positive 17-sided shape only with a compass and a ruler without a scale. Young people are doing it and feel more and more difficult.

The difficulty aroused the youth's fighting spirit: I must make it! He picked up the compasses and rulers, drew them on paper, and tried to solve the problem with some supernormal ideas. Finally, when the window showed a glimmer of light, the young man took a sigh of relief and he finally made this problem!

After the assignment was handed over to the instructor, the instructor was immediately shocked. He said to the youth in a trembling voice: "Is this really made by you? Do you know that you have solved a mathematical unsolved case with more than 2,000 years of history? Archimedes did not solve it, and Newton did not solve it. You solved it one night! You are a genius! I am studying this problem recently. When I laid out the topic yesterday, I accidentally pinched a small note with this title on the subject."

Many years later, when the young man recalled this scene, he always said: "If someone tells me that this is a mathematical problem with more than 2,000 years of history, I can't solve it in one night."

This young man is the math prince Gauss.