ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Évariste Galois

French mathematician famous for dying at the age of 20 as the result of a duel.

Despite his total collected works amounting to a mere 60 pages or so, he had a significant influence in the development of the field of group theory. He was in fact the first person to use the word group in a technical sense.

His innovative approach to the problem of the insolubility of the quintic led to the field known now as Galois theory.

There has been a lot of old rubbish written about Galois, not least the overly-romanticised account of his life as given by E. T. Bell in his Men of Mathematics.

For a rather more balanced and sober account, see the Historical Introduction in Ian Stewart's Galois Theory, 3rd Edition.

Nationality

French.

History

• Born: 25 Oct 1811, Bourg La Reine (near Paris), France
• Died: 31 May 1832, Paris, France

Theorems and Definitions

• Galois Theory
• Fundamental Theorem of Galois Theory
• Galois Field
• Galois Group
• Galois Connection

See also

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Évariste Galois": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics (1937): Chapter $\text{XX}$
• Richard A. Dean: Elements of Abstract Algebra (1966): $\S 1.1$
• Allan Clark: Elements of Abstract Algebra (1971)... (previous)... (next): Introduction
• John F. Humphreys: A Course in Group Theory (1996): $\S 1$: Summary