François Plantade: Abel, a mathematical genius | Tangente

François Plantade:

For Tangente, François Plantade looks back at the life of Niels Henrik Abel, a 19th-century Norwegian mathematician who remains little known despite his major influence on the mathematics of his day. He died at 26, and his work only began to gain recognition toward the end of his life.

Written by

Clémentine Laurens

PublishedFebruary 20, 2023UpdatedSeptember 19, 20261 min read

Tangente: Who was Niels Henrik Abel?**

François Plantade: He was a dazzling mathematician—a mathematical phenomenon. A genius who spent his life inventing new things and tackling a fairly diverse range of subjects.

Abel was born into a modest family in Norway in 1802. His father was a Lutheran pastor who educated Abel himself until his death in 1815. Niels Henrik then had four or five siblings whom he had to support financially after his father's death. He spent his entire life scrambling for money. He never managed to secure a position at the University of Kristiania (the former name of Norway's capital, Oslo), which was a real tragedy for him! Abel did not want to settle abroad: he wanted to teach at home in Norway.

Abel died in poverty from tuberculosis at the age of 26.

What was Norway like at the time?

Discussion

Comments

Join the discussion

No comments yet. Be the first to respond.

On the same theme

Articles recommended for you.

History and Culture

Two geniuses, two approaches

Two methods are known for proving that the general quintic equation cannot be solved: Abel's method, presented in 1824 and refined in 1826, and Galois's method from 1829–1830. Galois theory is fairly well known, whereas Abel's ideas are less often discussed.

MARC THIERRYMay 18, 2022

History and Culture

Galois's brilliant contribution

Following his work on solving fourth-degree equations, Lagrange turned to the fifth-degree case. It was not until Abel that these equations were shown not to be solvable by radicals. Galois would provide a necessary and sufficient condition for an equation of any degree to be so solvable. In doing so, he founded group theory.

Daniel LignonNov 16, 2021

History and Culture

Poincaré and the context of the Belle Époque | Tangente

Poincaré's era was exceptionally fruitful for science: the twenty years around 1900 saw extraordinary conceptual advances and feats of intellectual ingenuity, fostered by increasingly international exchanges through publications and meetings.

JEAN AYMESAug 24, 2021

History and Culture

Early formalizations

Évariste Galois's tragic death lent an epic quality to the introduction of the group concept in mathematics. What followed is less familiar but fascinating, culminating in brilliant theorems that are still taught today. Sixty years later, the notion of a group was finally established.

BERTRAND HAUCHECORNENov 17, 2021