The Tragic Story of Évariste Galois

"Ne pleure pas, Alfred ! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans!" was the last thing Évariste Galois ever said in his short life. In English, this means, "Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty!" These words were spoken to Évariste's brother. Évariste was convinced he would die the next day. In fact, he stayed up all night the night before writing letters, trying to get his ideas out on paper before he perished. So, why was he so sure he would be killed?

Évariste Galois was born in October of 1811 in France. His parents were both highly educated, and his mother homeschooled him until he was 12. When he was 14, he began to take an interest in math. When he was 17, he tried to get into a difficult school, but he failed the oral examination because he did not give enough explanations. He went to another school instead, and the next year he started discovering things about the theory of polynomial equations, which are equations with more than one variable (x, y, z, etc). Unfortunately, in 1829 his father, who was a politician, committed suicide after a dispute with the priest. Afterwards, he tried to enter the same prestigious college again, and failed. He was definitely qualified, and no one knows for sure why he failed. Some say he grew exasperated, and threw something at the examiner, or the examiner couldn't understand how he was getting his answers. Still at the mediocre school, Évariste wrote a letter criticizing his school's director for locking the students in the school during a riot and put in it a magazine. Rather than be expelled, he quit school and joined the national guard. His unit was soon disbanded, though. Soon after, Évariste attended a party where he proposed a toast to the king while holding a dagger near his cup. This was taken as a threat to the king, so he was arrested, but released a couple months after. Then, he wore a uniform that he wasn't supposed to on a parade, and so was arrested again! Évariste kept developing his ideas while in prison, and he was released six months later.

About a month later, Évariste was going to a duel. The circumstances of this duel are uncertain, as there are no clear records of this moment. Some sources claim that the duel was about a woman who he fell in love with. She apparently told him of her life, and this may have caused him to provoke the duel on her behalf. The letters he wrote support this theory. Others say that it was an undercover police agent, or someone opposed to his political views. Whoever it was, Évariste knew he would die the next day.

So, what do people do when they think they're going to die the next day? Well, Évariste thought the answer was writing letters. Apparently, he spent the entire night before the duel writing. He wrote mostly to his friends, but he also sent a letter to a famous mathematician. They outlined his ideas about a new branch of math, which he called group theory. These same ideas had been rejected by the mathematician before, but Évariste knew that his ideas were important, and someone needed to have them before he perished. So, Évariste spent the night before his duel frantically scribbling down everything he could think of that he might have discovered. This begs the question, if someone is in a duel, should they get enough sleep, and maybe win the duel, or write down all their ideas in hopes that someone will decipher them and their life will not have been in vain?

As Évariste thought, he did lose the duel the next day, and was abandoned, wounded, in the dust. Someone found him and took him to a hospital, but he passed away the next day. Eventually, mathematicians looked into the letter he had sent them, and discovered that he had some amazing thoughts. They definitely regretted not taking him seriously when he was alive. In 1843 (11 years later!) Évariste's work was finally published. Évariste Galois had a short, but meaningful, life.





Picture:

http://selunec.deviantart.com/art/Evariste-Galois-189586719