The Facts On File Algebra Handbook

the age of 70 he was forced to recant his beliefs under threat of

death by torture. He was condemned to house arrest, and was

not allowed to publish any work. He secretly continued his

research and wrote anyway, and his work was smuggled into

the Netherlands and published in 1638. Galileo died, blind,

under house arrest, on Christmas Day in 1642, the same day

Newton was born.

Galois, Evariste (1811–32) French mathematician known for his

“genius and stupidity.” He published his first mathematical

paper at the age of 17 on CONTINUED FRACTIONs. By the age of

18, Galois was imprisoned for six months for wearing a

National Guard uniform, defying French law. At 19, he wrote

three important papers on algebraic EQUATIONs. He is most

famous for the legendary story of the last 24 hours of his life,

despite the fact that it is generally acknowledged that the story

has been somewhat exaggerated. According to legend, the 20-

year-old Galois was challenged to a duel, which it is thought

was either instigated to defend his politics, to defend the honor

of a woman, or as part of an elaborate conspiracy to get rid of

him for his radical views. Afraid that he might lose the duel, he

wrote 60 pages of mathematical concepts that he wanted to get

on paper, including group theory, scribbling frequently and

frantically in the margins that he didn’t have enough time as he

worked through the night. He was right. The next day he was

shot in the abdomen, and he died the day after. The importance

of the theory he frantically wrote down was that he had

discovered “under what conditions an equation can be solved,”

which is now known in geometry as the Galois theory.

Gauss, Karl Friedrich(1777–1855) German mathematician who is

often referred to as the “prince of mathematics.” He is famous

for several accomplishments made by the time he reached his

early 20s, including correcting one of his father’s payroll

calculations at the age of three, instantly SUMming an

ARITHMETIC SERIESof the INTEGERs of 1 to 100 in the third

grade (the answer is 5,050), constructing a heptadecagon for

the first time in history using just a straightedge and a compass

at the age of 19, proving the FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF

ALGEBRAat the age of 20, and discovering the Fundamental

Theorem of Arithmetic at the age of 24, at which time he also

BIOGRAPHIES Galois – Gauss

BIOGRAPHIES Galois – Gauss