84 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



discoverers of fundamental principles are not generally awarded 

 much recompense. They often die misunderstood and unre- 

 warded. But while the fame of the former is bound to wane as 

 new processes supersede their own, the fame of the latter can but 

 increase. Indeed the importance of each principle grows with the 

 number and the value of its applications; for each new application 

 is a new tribute to its worth. To put it more concretely, when we 

 are very thirsty a juicy orange is more precious to us than an 

 orange tree. Yet when the emergency has passed, we learn to 

 value the tree more than any of its fruits; for each orange is an 

 end in itself, while the tree represents the innumerable oranges 

 of the future. The fame of Galois has a similar foundation; it is 

 based upon the unlimited future. He well knew the pregnancy of 

 his thoughts, yet they were even more far-reaching than he could 

 possibly dream of. His complete works fill only sixty-one small 

 pages: but a French geometer, publishing a large volume some 

 forty years after Galois' death, declared that it was simply a com- 

 mentary on the latter's discoveries. Since then, many more conse- 

 quences have been deduced from Galois' fundamental ideas 

 which have influenced the whole of mathematical philosophy. It is 

 likely that when mathematicians of the future contemplate his 

 personality at the distance of a few centuries, it will appear to 

 them to be surrounded by the same halo of winder as those of 

 Euclid, Archimedes, Descartes and Newton. 



Evariste Galois was born in Bourg-la-Reine, near Paris, on the 

 25th of October, 1811 in the very house in which his grandfather 

 had lived and had founded a boys' school. This being one of the 

 very few boarding schools not in the hands of the priests, the 

 Revolution had much increased its prosperity. In the course of 

 time, grandfather Galois had given it up to his younger son and 

 soon after, the school had received from the imperial government 

 a sort of official recognition. When Evariste was born, his father 

 was thirty-six years of age. He had remained a real man of the 

 eighteenth century, amiable and witty, clever at rhyming verses 

 and writing playlets, and instinct with philosophy. He was the 



