section_path: Scientific work/Algebra and number theory/Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
section_name: Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
paragraph_text: Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
  
  In the preface to the Disquisitiones, Gauss dates the beginning of his work on number theory to 1795. By studying the works of previous mathematicians like Fermat, Euler, Lagrange, and Legendre, he realized that these scholars had already found much of what he had discovered by himself. The Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, written since 1798 and published in 1801, consolidated number theory as a discipline and covered both elementary and algebraic number theory. Therein he introduces the triple bar symbol (≡) for congruence and uses it for a clean presentation of modular arithmetic. It deals with the unique factorization theorem and primitive roots modulo n. In the main chapters, Gauss presents the first two proofs of the law of quadratic reciprocity and develops the theories of binary and ternary quadratic forms.
  
  The Disquisitiones include the Gauss composition law for binary quadratic forms, as well as the enumeration of the number of representations of an integer as the sum of three squares. As an almost immediate corollary of his theorem on three squares, he proves the triangular case of the Fermat polygonal number theorem for n = 3. From several analytic results on class numbers that Gauss gives without proof towards the end of the fifth chapter, it appears that Gauss already knew the class number formula in 1801.
  
  In the last chapter, Gauss gives proof for the constructibility of a regular heptadecagon (17-sided polygon) with straightedge and compass by reducing this geometrical problem to an algebraic one. He shows that a regular polygon is constructible if the number of its sides is either a power of 2 or the product of a power of 2 and any number of distinct Fermat primes. In the same chapter, he gives a result on the number of solutions of certain cubic polynomials with coefficients in finite fields, which amounts to counting integral points on an elliptic curve. An unfinished eight chapter was found among left papers only after his death, consisting of work done during 1797–1799.