Anna's mathematician friend has solved the riddle of Anderson's mysterious numbers. Perhaps he was influenced by a German celebrity interested in mathematics, classical philology, astronomy, geodesy, and other subjects. It would be a wonder if he didn't! After all, at some point, every student of natural sciences encounters the formulae of Carl Friedrich Gauss, who was born in 1777 in Braunschweig and died in 1855 in Göttingen.

He made his father's computations more accurate when he was just 3 years old. Gauss created and devised innumerable new mathematical formulae and proofs, working nonstop. Nonetheless, he only published a small portion of his research throughout his lifetime. In terms of publication, his motto was "pauca sed matura," or "few, but ripe," and he preferred to write in his journals when there was a lack of concrete evidence. The mathematician's discoveries are still useful in modern technology; for instance, the Gaussian day of the week formula is used to determine the day of the week for any date.

Even at an advanced age, Gauss was still capable of making intricate mental math calculations. The Göttingen cemetery contains Gauss' mortal remains but not his brain. It was removed and analyzed numerous times, but the reason for his extraordinary arithmetic abilities has yet to be discovered.