# Gauss begins a private mathematical diary whose results he largely withholds from print

Date: 1796

## The fact

On 30 March 1796 [Gauss](/people/carl-friedrich-gauss) opened the small private diary in which he logged discoveries (including the heptadecagon construction) that, in many cases, became public only decades later or after his death, when editors read the booklet. It is not the 1801 Disquisitiones, which did make a subset public, and it is not a later collected-works volume. He knew; the public did not. The row stores a knowledge-hoarding path. It does not twin every diary line as a Fact.

## Context

Priority culture plus perfectionism produced a booklet instead of letters to journals. Other mathematicians retraced results they could have read. That is a data-access harm even when the same man later printed masterpieces. Do not treat a 1898 or later diary edition as 1796 public teaching. Do not treat the heptadecagon’s later fame as contemporaneous open data. Disquisitiones remains an improving offset for what it did print. Posthumous editors are other authors. They are not Gauss’s 1796 hand making the diary public. A booklet that parked the heptadecagon and much else away from journals is delayed data even when Disquisitiones later printed a subset.

## Evidence and sources

Göttingen’s Gauss Nachlass, digitised at GDZ, is the archival home of the diary tradition. MacTutor independently discusses the diary’s existence, the 1796 heptadecagon entry, and the delay of publication of many notes. Official: https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/. Independent: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Gauss/. The records establish a private 1796– diary with delayed public access. They do not establish a unique later citation-loss series. Later collected-works editors are other authors; they do not convert 1796 into a journal issue. A showing that the diary was circulated as a journal in 1796 would change the row.

Official or archival record: Göttingen Digitisation Centre — Gauss prints and papers (https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/; Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen).

## Significance

Worsening data-access path: results parked in a pocket book. High confidence on the diary’s existence and delayed publication. Modest weight because some results did reach Disquisitiones. Later editors’ hero-worship is not 1796 openness. Non-Euclidean silence is a neighbouring but distinct holdback. Do not invent a unique modern open-science coefficient.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## What is established and what is not

Established: from 1796 Gauss kept a private diary of results largely withheld from contemporary print. Not established: that every later theorem in algebra was in the booklet, or that 1801 is this holdback. A 1796 journal publication of the whole diary would change the row.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Diary holdback is not the 1801 Disquisitiones, which did print some results. Mixed effects of Gauss begins a private mathematical diary whose results he largely withholds from print are separate paths.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

The attached driver is [personal-data-protection](/drivers/personal-data-protection). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

Shared responsibility is part of Gauss begins a private mathematical diary whose results he largely withholds from print. Naming Carl Friedrich Gauss does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1796-03-30 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

## People

- Carl Friedrich Gauss: https://factrail.ai/people/carl-friedrich-gauss

## Drivers

- Personal-Data Protection: https://factrail.ai/drivers/personal-data-protection

## Sources

- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Gauss/
- https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/gs-diary-holdback