Évariste Galois

Évariste Galois is both one of the most famous mathematicians and one of the least known. His work revolutionized the approach to algebraic equations. It is in the margin of his last memoir, written shortly before his death in a duel at the age of 20, that one finds the famous formula "I have no time". What we call today "Galois theory" is the culmination of research begun sixteen years after his disappearance, based on innovative ideas found in his papers, which contributed to spectacular advances in mathematics. His life, for its part, has dark areas and romantic elements that have sparked numerous hypotheses and legends. Galois was a rebel at odds with the institution: revolutionary, rejected from the École Polytechnique, expelled from the École Normale, misunderstood by the Académie des Sciences, imprisoned, challenged to a duel… The last section of this book attempts to reconstruct, with the knowledge of the time, the course of Galois's thinking that led to his memoir on the conditions of solvability of equations by radicals.
The sections
• A far too short life • A promising young student • The resolution of algebraic equations • Galois… by Galois