
Liouville, Hermite and Lindemann: paving the way | Tangente
They paved the way
A tribute to the pioneers who blazed the trail for others to follow.


A tribute to the pioneers who blazed the trail for others to follow.


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Among irrational numbers, transcendental numbers are not roots of any polynomial equation with integer coefficients. They seem to transcend common sense, hence their name. Cantor showed that they make up the overwhelming majority of the real numbers, without identifying a single one!

In Latin, the verb transcendere combines trans, "beyond," with scandere, "to climb"; it therefore literally means "to climb beyond," "to cross" or "to surpass."

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.

The Institut Henri Poincaré hosted an exhibition entitled "The Depth of Surfaces," devoted to the mathematician Gaston Darboux. Its scientific curator was Barnabé Croizat, a specialist in this great French geometer.
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