Gauss’s Children and Adam’s Gold

The great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss had two sons and a daughter by his second wife (Minna). The oldest of these was Eugene, born in 1811. It seems that Eugene was the most intellectually gifted of all Gauss's children, but, despite this (or because of it?), relations between them were very poor. According to one of Eugene's sons (Charles Henry)

Grandfather did not want any of his sons to attempt mathematics, for he said he did not think any of them would surpass him and he did not want the name lowered. Probably he felt the same in a measure of any other line of scientific study.

Whatever the reason, Carl was determined for Eugene to study law, but the boy disliked the subject, and spent much of his time at school gambling and drinking. He fell into debt, and was forced to ask for his father's help, but Carl refused. As Eugene's son Charles Henry later told it.

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