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WHOM THE GODS LOVE by Leopold Infeld

WHOM THE GODS LOVE

By

Pub Date: Jan. 28th, 1947
Publisher: Whittlesey

In admittedly fictionalized biography, this takes considerable license in its use of hypothetical recapitulation and ornamentation in recording the story of Evariste Calois, the French mathematician who died in his youth. ""Perhaps the greatest mathematical genius that ever lived"" (allowing for Infeld's erbolee), Galois life is little known, and that only through fragments often disconnected and contradictory. The most of these fragments is made here- and more too- in the tracing of his schooling at Louis-Le-Grand, his hatred of the Jesuits, his passion for mathematics; his original research in his field which led to the writing of three articles formulating his theory of numbers -- articles ignored or misunderstood at the time. Always in the vanguard of rebellion, Galois participated in the Revolution of 1830, was expelled from normal school; twice arrested and imprisoned, and eventually died in a duel, shortly after his release...Questionable, in the validity of treatment -- as well as in initial interest in the subject.