Dase

A century before Klein, another human calculator, Johann Zacharias Dase, was also employed by the scientific establishment, to do their sums for them.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

When Dase died, age 37, he had completed a substantial part of this project.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Dase was born in Hamburg and started performing as a lightning calculator in his teens, when he was taken under the wing of two eminent mathematicians.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Then, on the recommendation of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, Dase embarked on another enormous project: compiling a table of factors of all the numbers between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Yet it was another calculation for which Dase is best remembered.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

When Dase died, age 37, he had completed a substantial part of this project.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Then, on the recommendation of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, Dase embarked on another enormous project: compiling a table of factors of all the numbers between 7,000,000 and 10,000,000.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Dase calculated the natural logarithms of the first 1,005,000 numbers, each to seven decimal places.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

A century before Klein, another human calculator, Johann Zacharias Dase, was also employed by the scientific establishment, to do their sums for them.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010

Dase calculated the natural logarithms of the first 1,005,000 numbers, each to seven decimal places.

HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID Alex Bellos 2010