"Most notably was Gauss at Göttingen, of whose style Abel once wrote: “He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.”" This is inc

"Most notably was Gauss at Göttingen, of whose style Abel once wrote: “He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.”" This is incorrect. Abel was reporting someone else's comment, who remains anonymous: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/what-is-the-original-source-for-abels-quote-about-gausshe-is-like-the-fox-wh https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/what-is-the-ori... Gauss was also not responding to this specific criticism (which he probably never heard); it was a general statement of his, reported in an obituary afterwards: "Gauss's aim was always to give his investigations the form of perfect works of art. He would not rest sooner and never gave a piece of work to the public until he had given it the perfection of form he desired for it. A good building should not show its scaffolding when completed, he used to say. In his demonstrations he used almost entirely the synthetic method, which he had come to prize through his studies of Archimedes and Newton. It is distinguished from the analytic method by its brevity and comprehensiveness. But the road leading to the discovery remains veiled; and indeed it often seems that Gauss frequently and intentionally turned aside from the road that led to mere instruction." https://archive.org/details/gauss00waltgoog/page/n79 https://archive.org/details/gauss00waltgoog/page/n79 1856