• C. F. Gauss (1777 - 1855)
  [English] [German]

For Gauss, as for Archimedes, we should expect that his fame carries with it also a fair amount of gossip. That's the case in the English entry, but the German one is much better.

The German one does much better with an account of Gauss' professional matters, too. The account is dense, probably not intended for the non-professional reader, but it is perhaps the best that could have been done in such a short space.

In fact, one of the major problems in dealing with these mathematicians, and probably all later ones, is how to economize - to get said what should be said without wasting space, and to compile a good list of further references. The main problem is that the material is overwhelming. How to make it digestible?

This is compounded by the fact that it is not easy to write mathematcs in Wikipedia, or inside html pages in general. My own opinion is that the conventional approach (TeX -> PDF) is better in most circumstances.