Disquisitiones Arithmeticae is a textbook on number theory written in Latin by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1798, when Gauss was 21, and published in 1801, when he was 24. It had a revolutionary impact on number theory by making the field truly rigorous and systematic and paved the path for modern number theory. In this book, Gauss brought together and reconciled results in number theory obtained by such eminent mathematicians as Fermat, Euler, Lagrange, and Legendre, while adding profound and original results of his own.

Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) said, "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences—and number theory is the queen of mathematics." Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers, or defined as generalizations of the integers.