Galton, Sir Francis 215

publish his famous 1638 piece by having it smuggled

out of Italy and printed in Holland.

Galileo died on January 8, 1642. He is remembered

for having a profound impact on the very nature of sci-

entific investigation, linking together mathematics, spec-

ulative philosophy, and physical experiment in the study

of the natural world. On October 31, 1992, on the

350th anniversary of Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II

publicly acknowledged that the Catholic Church was in

error to convict Galileo of heresy for his theory on the

motion of the planets.

Galois, Évariste (1811–1832) French Abstract alge-

bra Born on October 25, 1811, in Bourg La Reine,

France, scholar Évariste Galois is remembered for his

famous results that led not only to the conclusion that

there can be no general formula that solves all fifth-

degree

POLYNOMIAL

equations (even though there do

exist such formulae for solving

QUADRATIC

,

CUBIC

, and

QUARTIC EQUATION

s), but more importantly to the clas-

sification of which specific equations can be so solved.

His seminal 1829 work on the solutions of equations

founded the field of

GROUP THEORY

.

Galois enrolled in his first high-school mathemat-

ics course at the age of 17 and just a year later pub-

lished an original paper, “Démonstration d’un

théorème sur les fractions continues périodiques”

(Proof of a theorem on periodic continued fractions),

on the study of

CONTINUED FRACTION

s. His teachers at

the time, unfortunately, did not understand his work

and did not regard him as a gifted student. (Admit-

tedly, Galois had difficulty articulating his sophisti-

cated ideas). Galois hoped to attend the prestigious

École Polytechnique, the leading university of Paris at

the time, but failed the entrance exam twice. He

enrolled, instead, at the École Normale, but was later

expelled for objecting to the university policy prohibit-

ing students from joining the Paris rebellion against

King Charles X. He joined the Artillery of the

National Guard, a radical wing of the military. In

1831, Galois was imprisoned for wearing its uniform

when support for the guard was made illegal.

Previously Galois had read the work of N

IELS

H

EN

-

RIK

A

BEL

(1802–29) on the study of algebraic solutions

to equations. The

SOLUTION BY RADICALS

problem was

on his mind and, while incarcerated, Galois wrote a

manuscript detailing his thoughts on the problem. Dur-

ing this time Galois fell in love with the daughter of the

resident physician of the prison, Stephanie-Felice du

Motel, but, as letters show, the feelings were not recip-

rocated. For reasons that are unclear today, Galois

fought a duel in her honor soon upon his release. He

was wounded in that duel and died the following day,

May 31, 1832.

Galois’s brother later copied the prison manuscript

and sent it to prominent mathematicians of the time. If

it were not for his brother’s initiative, the bulk of

Galois’s work would have been lost to us today. French

mathematician J

OSEPH

L

IOUVILLE

(1809–82) published

Galois’s seminal piece in 1846.

Galton, Sir Francis (1822–1911) British Statistics

Born on February 16, 1822, in Sparkbrook, England,

Francis Galton is remembered in mathematics for his

pioneering work in applying statistical techniques to

the analysis of biological problems. Galton’s insights

and contributions to the nature of statistical analysis

paved the way for the development, and consequent

widespread use, of statistics throughout the biological

and social sciences in the 20th century.

Galton completed a basic bachelor’s degree at

Cambridge, taking only enough mathematics courses to

meet distribution requirements. (He never received seri-

ous training in mathematics.) After inheriting a consid-

erable amount of money from his father, Galton

journeyed through southwestern Africa and garnered

considerable fame as an intrepid explorer. He devel-

oped an interest in the study of human hereditary and

began considering the issue of selective breeding as a

means to improve the human race. (Such pursuits were

deemed acceptable at his time.) Galton also developed

a simple mathematical model of ancestral hereditary

based on the idea that each parent contributes 1/4 of a

genetic trait to a child, each grandparent of 1/16 the

trait to the child, and so forth, so that the sum of con-

tributions from all ancestors is unity:

Galton received a knighthood for this work in 1909.

The University of London established the Francis

Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics in his honor in

the late 1800s. The eminent statistician K

ARL

P

EARSON