Page "Carl Friedrich Gauss" Paragraph 8

The year 1796 was most productive for both Gauss and number theory.

He discovered a construction of the heptadecagon on 30 March.

He further advanced modular arithmetic, greatly 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.