The Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize for Applications of Mathematics is a mathematics award, granted jointly by the International Mathematical Union and the German Mathematical Society for "outstanding mathematical contributions that have found significant applications outside of mathematics". The award receives its name from the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. With its premiere in 2006, it is to be awarded every fourth year, at the International Congress of Mathematicians.

The previous laureate was presented with a medal and a cash purse of EUR10,000 funded by the International Congress of Mathematicians 1998 budget surplus.

The official announcement of the prize took place on 30 April 2002, the 225th anniversary of the birth of Gauss. The prize was developed specifically to give recognition to mathematicians; while mathematicians have an impact on the world outside of their field, their studies are often not recognized. The prize aims to honour those who have made contributions and impacts in the fields of business, technology, or even day-to-day life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.