Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum and "the greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science, is ranked among history's most influential mathematicians. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on 30 April 1777 in Brunswick, in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, to poor, working-class parents, his mother was illiterate and never recorded the date of his birth, remembering only that he had been born on a Wednesday, eight days before the Feast of the Ascension. Gauss solved this puzzle about his birthdate in the context of finding the date of Easter, deriving methods to compute the date in both past and future years, he was christened and confirmed in a church near the school he attended as a child. Gauss was a child prodigy. In his memorial on Gauss, Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen says that when Gauss was three years old he corrected a math error his father made.

Many versions of this story have been retold since that time with various details regarding what the series was – the most frequent being the classical problem of adding all the integers from 1 to 100. There are many other anecdotes about his precocity while a toddler, he made his first groundbreaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager, he completed his magnum opus, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, in 1798, at the age of 21—though it was not published until 1801. This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day. Gauss's intellectual abilities attracted the attention of the Duke of Brunswick, who sent him to the Collegium Carolinum, which he attended from 1792 to 1795, to the University of Göttingen from 1795 to 1798. While at university, Gauss independently rediscovered several important theorems, his breakthrough occurred in 1796 when he showed that a regular polygon can be constructed by compass and straightedge if the number of its sides is the product of distinct Fermat primes and a power of 2.

This was a major discovery in an important field of mathematics. Gauss was so pleased with this result that he requested that a regular heptadecagon be inscribed on his tombstone; the stonemason declined, stating that the difficult construction would look like a circle. The year 1796 was productive for both Gauss and number theory, he discovered a construction of the heptadecagon on 30 March. He further advanced modular arithmetic simplifying manipulations in number theory. On 8 April he became the first to prove the quadratic reciprocity law; this remarkably general law allows mathematicians to determine the solvability of any quadratic equation in modular arithmetic. The prime number theorem, conjectured on 31 May, gives a good understanding of how the prime numbers are distributed among the integers. Gauss discovered that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers on 10 July and jotted down in his diary the note: "ΕΥΡΗΚΑ! num = Δ + Δ' + Δ". On 1 October he published a result on the number of solutions of polynomials with coefficients in finite fields, which 150 years led to the Weil conjectures.

Gauss remained mentally active into his old age while suffering from gout and general unhappiness. For example, at the age of 62, he taught himself Russian. In 1840, Gauss published his influential Dioptrische Untersuchungen, in which he gave the first systematic analysis on the formation of images under a paraxial approximation. Among his results, Gauss showed that under a paraxial approximation an optical system can be characterized by its cardinal points and he derived the Gaussian lens formula. In 1845, he became an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. In 1854, Gauss selected the topic for Bernhard Riemann's inaugural lecture "Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen". On the way home from Riemann's lecture, Weber reported that Gauss was full of excitement. On 23 February 1855, Gauss died of a heart attack in Göttingen. Two people gave eulogies at his funeral: Gauss's son-in-law Heinrich Ewald, Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, Gauss's close friend and biographer.

Gauss's brain was preserved and was studied by Rudolf Wagner, who found its mass to be above average, at 1,492 grams, the cerebral area equal to 219,588 square millimeters. Developed convolutions were found, which in the early 20th century were suggested as the explanation of his genius. Gauss was a Lutheran Protestant, a member of the St. Albans Evangelical Lutheran church in Göttingen. Potential evidence that Gauss believed in God comes from his response after solving a problem that had defeated him: "Finally, two days ago, I succeeded—not on account of my hard efforts, but by the

Edmundson Parkes was President and CEO of United Gas Corporation, a major oil company from its inception in 1930 to its hostile takeover and subsequent forced merger with Pennzoil in 1968. He was one of the lone holdovers when Pennzoil convened a new board of directors to manage the company and its subsidiaries. Parkes was born in 1904 in Jefferson County, Alabama to Major William J. Parkes and Elmira Melissa Huey. Parkes' father was a former Commandant of the University of Alabama and Captain in the Alabama State Militia who raised a troop to fight for Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish–American War. Parkes was named for his grandmother, Mary Edmundson, herself a granddaughter of George A. Wilson, a former Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Tennessee Freemasons. Parkes graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1925, he worked his way through the ranks of the United Gas Corporation, starting with what would become a company subsidiary in 1928. After several promotions, he was named President of United Gas Pipeline Company and Union Producing Company.

He was named President and CEO of the parent corporation, United Gas, in 1958. He was a Past President of the American Gas Association, served as Chairman of the Committee on Natural Gas Reserves of A. G. A, he was active in a number of professional and civic organizations. He married Julia Washburn of Monroe and had two daughters and Ruth, of Shreveport; the former married Dr. Paul Winder of Shreveport, had issue. Parkes' wife was a direct descendant of Myles Standish, as was the wife of Parkes' rival and Pennzoil founder, George H. W. Bush

Dudley Buck was an American composer and writer on music. He published several books, most notably the Dictionary of Musical Terms and Influence of the Organ in History, published in New York City in 1882, he is best known today for his organ composition, Concert Variations on the Star-Spangled Banner, Op. 23, arranged into an orchestral version. Born in Hartford, Buck was the son of a merchant who gave him every opportunity to cultivate his musical talents. After attending Trinity College, for four years he studied in Leipzig at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was a pupil of Louis Plaidy, he pursued further studies in Dresden and Paris. On returning to America he held positions of organist in Hartford and Boston. In 1875 Buck went to New York City to assist Theodore Thomas as conductor of orchestral concerts, from 1877 to 1902 was organist at Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. By this time he had become well known as a composer, his compositions included church music, a number of cantatas, an unperformed grand opera Serâpis, a comic opera Deseret, a symphonic overture Marmion, a symphony in E flat, other orchestral and vocal works.

Buck taught private music lessons throughout his career. Among his notable pupils were Paul Ambrose, C. B. Hawley, William Howland, Daniel Protheroe, Harry Rowe Shelley, James Francis Cooke, Charles Sanford Skilton. See: List of music students by teacher: A to B#Dudley Buck. Orr, N. Lee, ed.. Dudley Buck: American Victorian Choral Music. Music of the United States of America vol. 14. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions. CS1 maint: extra text: authors list Free scores by Dudley Buck at the International Music Score Library Project Dudley Buck at Music of the United States of America Free scores by Dudley Buck in the Choral Public Domain Library Art of the States: Dudley Buck Library of Congress Biography page Sheet music for "Sunset", New York: G. Schirmer, 1877, from the Alabama Sheet Music Collection Works by Dudley Buck at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Dudley Buck at Internet Archive