Évariste Galois

Born

October 25, 1811

Died

May 31, 1832 (aged 20)

Known as

mathematician, revolutionary

Évariste Galois was a French mathematician and political activist. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a problem that had been open for 350 years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra.

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