Gauss's law
Ley de Gauss
- Date
- 1835 · confidence medium
- Place
- Göttingen, Germany
- Credited to
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Gauss shows that the electric flux through a closed surface is proportional to the charge it encloses, applying to electricity a result of mathematical analysis (the divergence theorem) that he left unpublished among his papers.
Gauss derived the law around 1835 as part of his work on potential theory, but did not publish it; it was collected in his complete works decades after his death. Lagrange had anticipated the equivalent mathematical result (the divergence theorem) in 1773 without applying it to electricity.
What it led to
- One of Maxwell's four equations of electromagnetism
- Standard method for computing electric fields with symmetry
- Integral and differential formulation of electrostatics