Niels Henrik Abel
1802–1829, Finnøy, near Stavanger, Norway, Froland, Norway
Norwegian mathematician who, in his early twenties, proved that the general quintic equation cannot be solved by radicals, and who laid the foundations of the theory of elliptic and abelian functions before dying in poverty at 26.
Abel grew up in poverty in rural Norway, the son of a Lutheran minister whose political career ended in disgrace and whose death in 1820 left the family destitute. His school mathematics teacher Bernt Holmboe recognised his exceptional talent and raised money to let him study at the University of Christiania. While still a student, Abel proved in 1824 the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation by radicals, self-publishing the six-page proof at his own expense.
With a government travel grant, Abel visited Crelle in Berlin, who published several of his papers in the new Crelle's Journal, and then travelled to Paris, where he submitted a major memoir on what became known as Abel's theorem to the Academy of Sciences; it was mislaid and not properly recognised until after his death. Suffering from tuberculosis and deep in debt, he returned to Norway, working as a substitute lecturer, and made further major advances in the theory of elliptic functions in competition with Jacobi. He died in Froland in April 1829, aged 26, just two days before a letter arrived offering him a professorship in Berlin.
Workplaces: University of Christiania (substitute lecturer)
Norway