Why is Easter NOW and why is it on a different date every year? There's mathematics behind it: For a long time, it took a lot of effort to calculate. Astronomers had to calculate the phases of the moon in advance and scholars wrote entire books on how to calculate the date of Easter.
The famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss found this procedure far too complicated and created a formula consisting of just a few equations – the Gaussian Easter formula. Even today, we can still use this formula, which is over two hundred years old, to calculate the date of Easter every year.
The mathematician, whose face the older followers among you may still recognize from the 10 DM bill, was born on 30.04.1777 in Braunschweig. His name is behind many well-known mathematical formulas – such as the #algorithm named after him, the normal distribution, and the sum formula. Because of his outstanding scientific achievements, he was already considered the »Lord of Mathematicians« during his lifetime. We have named a meeting room at our institute after him.
In addition to our room, several well-known institutions are named after him. For example, our institute has been a member of the Gauss Alliance since 2015, which focuses on research into high-performance computing. You can find out more about what the Gauss Alliance does here.
If you want to know more about the Easter formula, you can find out here [only available in German]: https://s.fhg.de/osterformel
With this in mind, we wish you and your families a wonderful Easter weekend from Kaiserslautern!
Carl Friedrich Gauss and the Gaussian Easter formula
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