# How/why was the Gaussian function invented?

How/why was the Gaussian function invented?

The function reminds me of nothing and I don't understand why Gauss would want to derive such thing, but we can see that it has numerous applications, so is there some connection between applicability and the way it's derived?

• – Rahul Feb 29 '16 at 3:23
• If you're looking for context of the problem, Gauss had been charged with surveying Germany and was trying to deal with the problem that every time his surveyor's brought back data, they couldn't measure the same distance the same way twice. There are some good references to the history of the problem in non-rigorous reading material such as Euclid's Window if you don't mind the story telling format. – Phillip Hamilton Feb 29 '16 at 3:56
• what I understand from wikipedia is that Laplace more than Gauss made a full definition of the normal distribution, from the experimental observations, the central limit theorem, the Fourier/Laplace transform of $e^{-x^2}$ and the differential equation $f'(x) = -2x f(x)$ – user1952009 Feb 29 '16 at 21:11