Carl Friedrich Gauss and the Gaussian Easter formula

Happy Easter from Kaiserslautern!

Happy Easter from Kaiserslautern! 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.

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