Évariste Galois

Mathematician and revolutionary who solved a 350-year-old problem.

While still a teenager, he solved a 350-year-old problem by determining when a polynomial can be solved by radicals.^[1] Évariste Galois, a French mathematician and political activist, was born on 25 October 1811 and died on 31 May 1832.^[2]

Last updated 2026-09-30 from the source article.

Quick Facts

Born: 25 October 1811
Birthplace: Bourg-la-Reine, French Empire
Died: 31 May 1832
Place of death: Paris, Kingdom of France
Cause of death: Gunshot wound to the abdomen
Field: Mathematics
Education: École préparatoire (no degree)
Known for: Work on theory of equations, group theory and Galois theory

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

The Annales de Mathématiques published Galois's initial paper, concerning simple continued fractions, in 1828.^[3][4] Two papers on polynomial equations were submitted by Galois to the Academy of Sciences, but Augustin-Louis Cauchy, who refereed them, declined to publish them.^[5] His political activities led to multiple arrests, and he was incarcerated for a period of several months.^[6]

What the cited sources add

Dumas also recounts that at a republican banquet Galois stood and said "A Louis-Philippe!" while holding a dagger.^[7] The nLab entry on Galois's last letter notes that the letter announced his solution to the "solvability of equations by radicals".^[8] In that same letter, Galois constructed the general linear group over a prime field and computed its order.^[9][8] Galois's 1828 paper on continued fractions proved that a regular continued fraction representing a quadratic surd is purely periodic if and only if the surd is reduced.^[3][4]

The projective special linear group PSL(2,p) was also constructed by him, and he noted that these groups were simple except when p equaled 2 or 3.^[10][8]

References

Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bruno, "Math and mathematicians : the history of math discoveries around the world", U X L, c. 2003, p. 171 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Galois theory". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Galois, "Démonstration d'un théorème sur les fractions continues périodiques", Annales de Mathématiques, 1828, p. 294 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Galois, "Démonstration d'un théorème sur les fractions continues périodiques", Annales de Mathématiques, 1828, p. 294. facts only, no text reused. numdam.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rothman, "Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois", The American Mathematical Monthly, 1982, p. 84–106 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bruno, "Math and mathematicians : the history of math discoveries around the world", U X L, 2003, p. 171, 174 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Dumas (père), "Mes Mémoires", Kessinger, October 2008. facts only, no text reused. dumaspere.com
"Galois' last letter in nLab", ncatlab.org. facts only, no text reused. ncatlab.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Galois' last letter in nLab", ncatlab.org; Letter, p. 410 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Évariste Galois" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Letter, p. 411; Wilson, "The finite simple groups", Springer-Verlag, 2009; Letter, pp. 411–412; "Galois's last letter, translated" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Évariste Galois (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.