Maybe I’ve lost your interest already with the word ‘maths’, but I promise you if ever there was a man who made maths interesting – that man is Évariste Galois.
Évariste was born into a world of political upheaval. He came into the world in 1811, in a village born just on the outskirts of Paris, to a politically active family. His father was a Republican and an avid supporter of Napoleon, and became mayor of the village when Évariste was still a toddler. The young Galois was educated at home, by his mother, until he was twelve, when he found himself enrolled in the Collège Royal de Louis-le-Grand.
At school, Galois was left unimpressed. In his first term there was a student rebellion, and a summary mass-expulsion of forty children, and though Galois himself was not involved the affair no doubt left him feeling unhappy at school. After failing in rhetoric (at the time a major subject in European schools), Galois was forced to repeat a year.
However it was in this year, things began to change. Galois picked up maths, and developed such an immediate love for it that his teachers instructed his parents to let him drop all his other subjects, since other subjects were only causing both him and his teachers “torment”. The next year, Galois applied to study mathematics at Paris’ leading university, but he failed the entrance exam. It’s worth noting this same university was notorious for its Republican activism, implying Galois had been inspired by his school uprising and his father’s political career. Back at his old college, Galois began ditching his school work for his own original ideas, and within the year had published his first mathematical paper. Over the next two months he then wrote two more articles on algebra.
The month after these articles, however, Galois’ momentum was suitably crushed after his father hung himself, after being blemished by false accusations. This same month, he once more applied to university, but once again he failed the exam. Giving up on Paris’ prime university, Galois settled for a second-rate one next door to the Collège Royal de Louis-le-Grand, where he would earn his degree one year later, aged eighteen. As part of his degree, he was forced to study literature. His teacher claimed, “he knows absolutely nothing. I was told that this student has an extraordinary capacity for mathematics. This astonishes me greatly, for, after his examination, I believed him to have but little intelligence.”
Galois continued his mathematical work after his degree, but after writing his next article he discovered the ideas had already been covered by someone else. He then started again, but when this second article was sent to the Paris Academy to be considered for the Grand Prize, the secretary very inconveniently died, and Galois’ article was forgotten about.
Galois’ bad luck continued when, after developing an idea covered by two contemporary mathematicians and publishing three papers on the matter, the Paris Academy awarded that year’s grand prize to both the other mathematicians (one of whom was at the time dead) and overlooked Galois’ work entirely.
The next year, revolution broke out once again in France, as Charles X fled the country. As riots erupted in Paris, Galois’ teacher at the university locked the students in, so they wouldn’t join the riots. Galois attempted to, failed to escape the building, and in retaliation wrote an article in a local newspaper exposing his teacher for not joining in with the revolution. His teacher didn’t take this very well, and Galois was promptly expelled from university.
Cutting his losses, Galois now joined the army, but after a year he quit and attempted to restart his mathematic career. He published two small pieces, and was invited by the famous mathematician Poisson to retry winning a grand prize at the Paris Academy.
Alas, Galois’ political streak got in the way. He attended a dinner of Republicans, where he made a threat against the incumbent king with a dagger in his hand. He was arrested, and at his trial he repeated the threat, and yet somehow, against all the odds, was acquitted. The following Bastille Day, however, Galois wore a Republican military uniform, which was illegal, and once more found himself in jail. While there, Poisson wrote to inform him that his paper had failed to make an impression at the academy.
In prison, Galois attempted suicide, survived, caught cholera, and survived again. Finally, in April, 1832, he was released. Unfortunately he had, while imprisoned, fallen in love with the physician’s daughter. Unfortunately she had another suitor, who Galois challenged to a duel.
The night before the duel, Galois hurriedly began writing down all he knew about Group Theory – a massively important aspect of maths that was almost entirely pioneered by Galois’ papers. Galois finished the manuscript with the line: “there is something to complete in this demonstration. I do not have the time.”
Before Galois had a chance to finish the paper, he went off to the duel, where he was promptly fatally wounded. After being discovered by a peasant, he was carried to hospital, where his wound got the better of him. He was only twenty years old.
After his death, Galois’ family sent his manuscripts to Gauss and Jacobi, two mathematicians of his calibre, as he had asked them to do before the duel. These papers formed what is now known as Galois Theory, an aspect of algebra still prevalent in both maths and science even today. One can’t help but wonder, had Galois taken the time to finish that demonstration, or if he had survived the duel and lived past twenty, how much more would we know today?
Sources
http://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Galois.html
The History Book 