Saturday, April 30, 2016

Evariste Galois

The death of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque on June 1, 1832 was the catalyst for the fighting to break out in the Parisian June Rebellion of 1832.  This event is captured in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  Lemarque's death came one day after the fatal duel of young mathematician Evariste Galois (1811-1832) - whose death may have been purposeful and intended to trigger the raising of the barricades.  If so, so much the worse for Galois, and so much the worse for us.

There is a great deal of legend that has grown up around Galois's life, and it was easy for biographers such as E. T. Bell and Leopold Infeld to romanticize his life.  He died at 20 in a duel, and by that young age he had already revolutionized mathematics - though that wasn't recognized for at least a decade after his death.  He wrote out a great deal of mathematics the night before he died - as if he knew for sure he was going to die - almost as if he planned to die - and in this writing we find the phrase, "Je n'ai pas le temps!"  ("I have no time!")  My understanding is that he had no second in the duel and that only one shot was fired.  Galois was shot in the stomach and left for dead in the field of Glacier Pond in Gentilly, 13th Arrondisement, Paris.

I spent a great deal of time trying to find the location of the duel - wanting to visit, pay my respects, take photographs, but as I assumed and was later told much has changed in Paris since 1832.  Apparently the field was near swamps, and, as I was told by a mathematical correspondent in Germany who is familiar with Paris, "Definitely the old swamps ("Glacière") don't exist, they used to be swamps that froze in winter, and whose ice was stored on the outskirts of Paris, but this part of Paris has been entirely built, and even the river is underground now.  There is a street ("rue de la Glacière") which corresponds roughly to the place."

The following picture is of  "rue de la Glacière" - a very short street with no sign of a field or swamp on or near it!


A passing peasant found Galois a couple of hours after the duel and brought him to La Chochin Hospital - which, in my pilgrimage I also sought out.  Obviously this too has changed since 1832 - remodeling, new wings and buildings added - as one would hope for a hospital over the course of 184 years!  But, though updated, here it is, the hospital where Galois was taken.  It's only two blocks away from rue de la Glacière.




Galois died at the Cochin Hospital at 10:00am the following morning.  He had refused the offices of a priest, but his younger brother Alfred was there with him, and Galois's last words were to his brother, “Ne pleure pas, Alfred! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans!” ("Don't cry, Alfred!  I need all my courage to die at twenty!")

Galois was buried in a common grave at Montparnasse Cemetery, and no trace of it is left.  A cenotaph memorializing him has been raised in the Bourg-la-Reine Cemetery near where family members are buried.  The following are pictures of Montparnasse Cemetery - his remains being somewhere inside:


The reason I began this post with a picture of the flag is that Galois was very political.  He was part of the Artillery of the National Guard, of which 19 officers were arrested late in 1830 for conspiracy to overthrow the government.  They were acquitted in May 9, 1831, and 200 republicans gathered for a dinner to celebrate the acquittal.  During the dinner Galois appeared to make threats against King Louis Phillipe - standing and raising both a glass and an unsheathed dagger.  It was said that he stated, "To Louis-Phillipe, if he betrays."  But the reality is that his words were drowned out in the surrounding noise.  Galois was arrested but, surprisingly, acquitted.  However on July 14, Bastille Day, he was arrested again because he was wearing the uniform of the Artillery of the National Guard, which was illegal; he was also carrying loaded guns and a dagger.

While in prison he tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself with a dagger, but the other prisoners stopped him.  In 1832 all the prisoners were moved to another location due to a cholera epidemic.  It seems that it was here that he fell in love with Stephanie-Felice du Motel, daughter of the attending physician.  She later spurned Galois, and this is involved at least in some way with his death.  In letters he wrote to friends not long before he died he says, "I was provoked by two patriots  .  .  .  it was impossible to refuse" and "I die a victim of an infamous coquette."

We don't know for certain what the cause of the duel was.  Was it purely a duel of love and honor?  Was it a set-up by other political forces to get rid of him (using Stephanie as a convenient ruse)?  Was it a way of "honorably" committing suicide, which he had been unsuccessful with in prison?  Was it self-sacrifice - him laying his life down for the cause he believed in, to be a trigger for barricades to go up and fighting to begin?

What we do know for certain is that his mathematical work - all done by the age of 20 - has altered the face of mathematics.  As mathematician Arthur Cayley said of Galois's work, "The idea of a group as applied to permutations or substitutions is due to Galois, and the introduction of it may be considered as marking an epoch in the progress of the theory of algebraic equations."

Biographer John Derbyshire also views the work of Galois as the beginning of a new epoch in algebra - the first being in the far reaches of antiquity when people first went from asking, "This plus this equals what?" to "This plus what equals that?" - the second being the development of "literal notation" (i.e. using letters in algebra in order to "relieve the imagination") in the 1500s and 1600s (if you think algebra is hard because they threw the alphabet in with the numbers, try doing it without the letters!) - and the third being Galois's move to higher levels of algebraic abstraction (this making up a huge part of what mathematics is today, but it's not remotely like the "algebra" you see in middle school, high school or junior college - it has to do with such things as fields, rings, ideals, groups - both abelian and non-abelian, as well as kernels and so on - and that's just the beginning of what his revolution has brought forth!).  I can't help but wonder where we would be mathematically and technologically had he lived past twenty and contributed even more!

As to biographies, I still find it a bit hard to let go of the fully romanticized versions of his life that I'd always heard.  It seems E. T. Bell wanted to inspire young people to go into mathematics (as Sophie Germain had been inspired by the story of Archimedes) and so played fast and loose with the facts in biographies of mathematicians in his book Men of Mathematics, of which there is a chapter on Galois.  (I don't know if I can fault him TOO much as this book did inspire such giants in the field as John Forbes Nash and Freeman Dyson to go into mathematics, and his book The Last Problem inspired Andrew Wiles to pursue and finally solve Fermat's Last Theorem, but still  .  .  .).

I first fell in love with the story of Galois when I read Leopold Infeld's biography Whom the Gods Love twenty-five years ago or so.  So if you want a lovely, romanticized version of Galois's life, these works of Bell and Infeld are the places to go.

If you want the cold, clarifying water of well-researched reality splashed in your face, check out Tony Rothman's essay on the facts surrounding the events at the end of Galois's life.

If you'd like a brief, accurate, and interesting biography of Galois read either the chapter "Pistols at Dawn" in John Derbyshire's book Unknown Quantity, or the chapter "The Romantic Mathematician" in Mario Livio's book The Equation that Couldn't be Solved.

Though as I've researched further into his life and have begun wistfully to feel that "ignorance is bliss," I don't know that we need all the romanticizing that has taken place.  The bare facts are intriguing enough in my mind - a genius whose mathematics changes the discipline entirely, who engages in questionable political activities, who dies in a mysterious duel at age 20 the day before the death of General Lemarque which triggered the fighting portrayed in Les Miserables, who is left for dead on the field, and who dies in his brothers arm's the next day asking his brother not to cry since he needs all of his courage to die at twenty - seems dramatic enough to me!



Garnier Opera House


It's funny how some of the things I have looked forward to most have proven underwhelming for me, and that some of the things I have just thrown in as an afterthought have knocked me off my feet.  Garnier Palais, the Paris Opera House, was one of the second.

I was really tired after hours of walking earlier in the day on yet another mathematical treasure hunt, and I was going back and forth about whether to go to the opera house or not.  My thought process finally tipped in the direction of going, and I'm so glad I did!  From the moment I walked in my jaw dropped to the floor, and I think it stayed there until I left.

I had initially put this post up as a "teaser" with just the one picture above - wondering if you would recognize the chandelier - as this is the opera house of Phantom of the Opera fame.




 






"Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams
Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before
Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar
And you'll live as you've never lived before

Softly, deftly, music shall surround you
Feel it, hear it closing in around you
Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind
In this darkness which you know you cannot fight
The darkness of the music of the night"


Friday, April 29, 2016

Jardin des Tuileries

 The majority of my "recording" time goes to my blog, but I try to save at least a bit of time for written journaling as well - mostly it's just when I can steal a rare moment, but today's journaling time was set in place before I left the United States.  Part of my planning for Paris was to spend time relaxing in Le Jardin des Tuileries.  The reason for that is that this is where mathematician Mary Somerville came to relax when she was in Paris in 1817.
The family traveled here because Mary's health was poor - partly from having been working too hard in England.  Here are her own words:

"My health was never good at Chelsea [London], and as I had been working too hard, I became so ill, that change of air and scene were thought absolutely necessary for me. We went accordingly to Paris; partly, because it was near home, as Somerville could not remain long with us at a time, and, partly, because we thought it a good opportunity to give masters to the girls, which we could not afford to do in London. When we arrived, I was so weak, that I always remained in bed writing till one o'clock, and then, either went to sit in the Tuileries gardens, or else received visits"

I can see why she found the Tuileries Gardens relaxing and restorative.  The rest of this post will simply be pictures and a video.  Sadly I have no means of video editing, so it's rough - but hopefully make the place more alive anyway.











I wonder what Mary Somerville might make of it had she known that very nearly 200 years later someone else would come here to reflect and relax simply because she had done so once upon a time.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

A Few Days in Paris


There is beautiful and amazing produce on EVERY corner!  There are fruit stands EVERYWHERE - even in the metro (underground!).  Every tiny market, and they are tiny, has a huge display of fruit outside, which makes it convenient for me to try to eat healthily!

I'm continuing to pack in venues as if each day is a tight-fitting jigsaw puzzle.  On the positive side I'm seeing a LOT!  On the negative side I hardly have time to process it and live it while I'm here.  Tomorrow should be a slower day, though, and once I'm in Germany the pace slows considerably.  Whew!

I was disappointed today when I got to Monmartre and realized I had left the SD card for my camera in my computer back at the hotel.  Actually, I'm surprised that hasn't happened to me more often, but I guess Monmartre and the Salvador Dali Museum will just have to remain in my own head - though if you want to see imagines you can easily search online!  Monmartre was very pretty; in my opinion it's the prettiest area of Paris that I've seen so far, so I am sorry not to be able to post pictures.  I have pictures of plenty else to post, though!!
The Orsay Museum as seen from the Tuileries near the Lourve; note the clocks on the top floor.
Looking toward the Seine and the Louvre from the Orsay
Monmartre from the Orsay
A popular spot inside the Orsay!
The Rouen Cathedral Series by Claude Monet
Toulouse Latrec
Ours Blanc by Pompon
This Monet kept catching my eye: Coquelicots
And then there is the Louvre just across the Seine from the Orsay.  I was at least as impressed with the outside as I was with the inside, which will be evident in the ratio of the number of photos outside to inside.






 
This place is HUGE!  It was overwhelming to know where to begin, so like everybody else I made a bee-line for the Winged Victory of Samothrace and - you know what's coming next - The Mona Lisa.  As you'll see in the pictures she's about as hard to get to as the Queen of England, but at least she stays put and people eventually do move on.




Honestly you would need something like two weeks spending all day in here to begin to really grasp the content!  Here are a few other pieces that caught my attention:
Also by Leonardo da Vinci - Portrait of a Woman
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David
Renoir - La Lecture
I visited a different sort of museum today as well - The Musee des Arts et Metier - an industrial design museum housing The National Conservatory of Arts and Industry (CNAM).  I had planned only to zip in and out and take pictures of their collection of pascalines (early computing devices invented by mathematician Blaise Pascal).  Once I got in there, however, I was sad I had packed my day so full.  I could have spent at least half a day in there.  I'll post some pictures today, but some I should save for my post on Pascal.  Oh, and I had forgotten something that I knew before I left home, and that is that Foucault's Pendulum is here as well, which was really cool!  
This is what I came for - more in a later post -
They had sets of Napier's Bones here too!!
They had nice displays for children as well - big, functional objects - abacus, Napier's Bones, etc.
Everything was just displayed so beautifully

And there was cool stuff like this Monochord with keyboard (?!)

Also, they have the laboratory equipment of Antoine Lavoirsier!!
And Foucault!
Foucault's Pendulum - housed in St. Martin des Champs Church - part of CNAM
St. Martin des Champs Church - home of Foucault's Pendulum
St. Martin des Champs Church with CNAM on right
Yesterday I began the day by going up in the Eiffel Tower, but I've already put up pictures of that in my post on Sophie Germain and in my first Paris post.  I'll try not to put up repeats.
View from the lowest level

View through the glass floor of the lowest level 
View coming down the elevator - cool how it slides out to the side :-)
A view from the top
Another view from the top
If I zoom in like this from the top I can see Notre Dame Cathedral.  Can you find it?
Another zoomed-in view from the top - Monmartre with the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur.  I climbed it today but have no photographic proof
Looking toward home from the top!
Looking back to the top from the second level
Lunch with a view - first level
 Walking along the Seine was super cool too  .  .  .


  .  .  .  but now it's really, really late (or is it really, really early?), and so to bed!