6. EVARISTE GALOIS 



No episode in the history of thought is more moving than the life 

 of Evariste Galois — the young Frenchman who passed like a 

 meteor about 1828, devoted a few feverish years to the most in- 

 tense meditation, and died in 1832 from a wound received in a 

 duel, at the age of twenty. He was still a mere boy, yet within 

 these short years he had accomplished enough to prove indubi- 

 tably that he was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. 

 When one sees how terribly fast this ardent soul, this wretched 

 and tormented heart, were consumed, one can but think of the 

 beautiful meteoric showers of a summer night. But this comparison 

 is misleading, for the soul of Galois will burn on throughout the 

 ages and be a perpetual flame of inspiration. His fame is incor- 

 ruptible; indeed the apotheosis will become more and more 

 splendid with the gradual increase of human knowledge. 



No existence could be more tragic than his and the only one 

 at all comparable to it is, strangely enough, that of another 

 mathematician, fully his equal, the Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel, 

 who died of consumption at twenty-six in 1829; that is, just when 

 Galois was ready to take the torch from his hand and to run with 

 it a little further. Abel had the inestimable privilege of living six 

 years longer, and think of these years — not ordinary years of a 

 humdrum existence, but six full years at the time that genius was 

 ripe — six years of divine inspiration! What would not Galois have 

 given us, if he had been granted six more such years at the climax 

 of his life? But it is futile to ask such questions. Prophecies too are 

 futile, yet a certain amount of anticipation of the future may be 

 allowed, if one does not contravene the experience of the past. For 

 example, it is safe to predict that Galois' fame can but wax, be- 

 cause of the fundamental nature of his work. While the inventors 

 of important applications, whose practical value is obvious, re- 

 ceive quick recognition and often very substantial rewards, the 



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