Into Unscientific

Chapter 309 I, Luo Feng, have been wandering for half my life

In the study.

Looking at Gauss with a complex and dignified expression.

The curiosity in Xu Yun's heart, which was already close to full value, couldn't help but become more vigorous.

According to data from the Gauss Museum at the University of Göttingen.

Until 2022.

A total of 68 letters sent or received by Gauss have been collected by the museum.

Among them, 41 Gauss is the recipient, and another 27 Gauss is the sender.

Among them, the number of the former is basically fixed, while the latter will increase by one or two every few years:

Gauss was famous all over the world when he was alive, so quite a few of his letters have been preserved and collected.

Some of these letters are considered family heirlooms.

Some are secretly collected by collectors, and they do not choose to publish them until their death.

No one but God knows how many letters Gauss has survived.

And in these letters to and from.

Recognized as the most famous letter, Gauss wrote a letter home to his son-in-law Heinrich Ewald.

Heinrich Ewald, like Weber, is one of the famous Seven Gentlemen of Göttingen.

The time when Gauss wrote the letter was November 1837, which was a few days before the German version of "Letter on the Bus".

In this letter he told Heinrich Ewald:

He personally does not agree with Heinrich Ewald's approach. If he can wait for the opportunity, there may be variables.

But since he was determined to do it, he chose to respect his son-in-law's choice.

He also told Aiwad not to back down, even if he sacrificed his life, he must complete his 'mission'.

At the same time, if something happened to Heinrich Ewald and Weber, he would pay for the living expenses of the two families in the future, without worrying about trivial matters such as money.

This letter does not involve academics, but it shows Gauss' character vividly:

Be cautious, and focus on stability, but as long as you choose a direction, you will never look back.

Don't credulously believe, but believe in what you promise, and what you promise to do.

In addition to this letter from home, most of Gauss's letters are related to academics:

For example, a letter discussing the problem of semicircular shadows with Lagrange, a letter stating that he discovered the method of least squares before Legendre, and so on.

There are about seven or eight important letters in the second grade.

And the letter Gauss handed to Xu Yun was obviously not sent, so who would be the person who wrote it?

Lobachevsky, the first proposer of non-Euclidean geometry?

Or Cauchy?

Or some other authority?

But can these people really make Gauss show the emotion he had before?

With this mentality in mind, Xu Yun accepted the letter from Gauss.

The envelope of the letter was dark yellow in color, and it felt brittle when you picked it up, exuding a stale smell.

I think it's been some years.

On the dark yellow cover of the envelope, the relevant information of the letter was written:

recipient:

Professor Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss.

Recipient address:

The mailbox of the professor of the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany.

mailing address:

The building of the Department of Classical Mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway.

sender:

Niels Henrik Abel.

etc? !

The moment Xu Yun saw the sender's name, Xu Yun's eyes froze!

Niels Henrik Abel?

He quickly confirmed the name again, and the pan-language plug-in that came with the halo clearly translated it into Chinese characters:

Nils Henrik

Abel.

Then Xu Yun suddenly thought of something, carefully and quickly opened the envelope, and took out the letter inside.

At the beginning of the letter, there was a title:

"The Argumentation Process About the Unary Quintic Equation Has No Algebraic General Solution".

Xu Yun's eyes lingered on this title for a long time before he slowly raised his head and said to Gauss thoughtfully:

"Professor Gauss, could this be the letter?"

Gauss nodded with a heavy face, and exhaled a breath of turbid air in an extremely complicated way, affirming Xu Yun's guess:

"That's right, Abel once wrote me a letter in 1824, in which he successfully demonstrated that the quintic equation in one variable has no algebraic general solution, but..."

"But I left the letter in the corner and never opened it."

"I didn't know such a thing until he perfected the theory of elliptic function before Jacobi, so I immediately contacted him with a professorship at the University of Berlin, but it was too late—when the University of Berlin issued the employment letter At that time, Abel had been dead for two days."

"So I have kept this letter in my collection, always reminding myself that I made such a big mistake, which indirectly led to the fall of a mathematical genius."

Seeing Gauss with a face full of regret and remorse, Xu Yun's heart was also quite heavy.

It turns out that the author of this letter is Abel

No wonder Gauss made such an expression.

Throughout the history of modern mathematics of mankind.

The loss of three young people is the most regrettable.

They are Galois, Ramanujan and Abel.

Among them, the situation of Galois was briefly introduced earlier, and a considerable part of the cause of his death was attributed to his politically keen character.

In fact, Galois had a very good background. His father was a mayor, his mother was also a member of parliament, and his university tutor was the famous Cauchy.

But precisely because of the strong political atmosphere in his family, Galois was trained to be a political fanatic since he was a child.

This kind of character caused Cauchy to be dissatisfied with this student all the time.

Although he often encouraged Galois by correspondence, he never introduced his contacts to Galois.

Later, Galois encountered a political conspiracy again, and finally died in the shady scene of the duel.

Ramanujan's cause of death was mental and physical illness:

He was first diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917, and at the end of the same year, he could not go home because of World War I, so he tried to commit suicide by lying on the train.

After failing to commit suicide, he returned to India in 1919 and died in Madras in 1920.

Both Galois and Ramanujan have left a lot of wealth to mankind, and it is a pity to think about it every time.

For example, Galois wrote the group theory three days before the duel, and Ramanujan left a large number of manuscripts and notes, which contained a large number of unproven formulas and propositions.

Many mathematicians have devoted themselves to the research of Ramanujan's manuscripts. It was not until 1997 that a part of them was finally completed and published in five volumes.

And if we say that Galois and Ramanujan's causes of death more or less have their own factors.

Then Abel's demise was completely a trick of fate.

Abel was born in Norway, and his family conditions were not very good since he was a child, but he still relies on his talent to be self-taught.

As an adult, Abel was known as one of the most handsome mathematicians, and his appearance was comparable to that of Plank when he was young. (Everyone can look for photos, really handsome)

Abel's father died when he was 18, and Abel, who was still in college, suddenly had to take on the burden of taking care of the whole family.

Fortunately.

The teachers at the University of Oslo he was studying in did not give up on this genius, and they funded Abel together.

As for Abel, he rewarded them with his grades.

In Abel's era, the solution of quintic equations in one variable was a very hot topic.

The closest achievement in mathematics to the correct answer during Abel's study was a statement made by an Italian mathematician named Ruffini.

The discussion was more than five hundred pages long, but it still didn't come to a correct conclusion.

Then Abel said that my plug-in has been activated, let me do it:

He used six pages of manuscript paper to perfectly solve the problem of solving the quintic equation in one variable, and also made some supplements to Ruffini's exposition-the reason why Abel only used six pages was because he didn't have much money to pay for the printing fee.

Later, the six-page manuscript was sent to a person by Abel, hoping to be appreciated by the other party.

That's right.

This man is Gauss.

But fate made another joke with Abel.

Gauss in 1824 was almost the peak of the semi-holy Dzogchen in the words of the novel, and he was about to break through the holy rank, and he was the only semi-holy in the world.

So naturally, he could receive a large number of letters every day-according to Gauss's self-report, he received more than 3,000 letters a year at most.

Students who have taken the college entrance examination in future generations should know it.

When teachers introduce the composition of the college entrance examination, they often tell everyone one thing:

Because there are too many essays in the college entrance examination, the marking teacher often just scans them in a hurry and quickly grades them according to the handwriting and the beginning.

There is only one word difference between Gauss and the college entrance examination, so Gauss used a similar method when reading the letter:

He will look at the handwriting and title first, and then decide whether to continue reading based on the content at the beginning.

And Abel's handwriting

Let's put it this way.

Compared with Abel's calligraphy, Lao Ai can be regarded as a great calligrapher.

In addition, Abel also added a self-deprecating content at the beginning, so Gauss at the time naturally had an impression:

The words are ugly, the beginning is long-winded, and you can solve the problem that others have not solved in 500 pages in only 6 pages?

So Gauss naturally threw the letter aside and ignored it.

Abel, who didn't wait for Gauss's reply, was displaced after that. He arrived in Paris at the second stop and handed over his manuscript to the French Academy of Sciences.

The secretary of the Academy of Sciences, shocked by the manuscript, sent it to Cauchy for review.

That's right.

Cauchy again.

But everyone knows that in addition to high productivity, Cauchy has another feature in writing:

His papers are very long.

For this reason, there were not enough places in mathematics magazines to publish his papers, so he set up a special issue in a fit of anger to publish his own papers.

Therefore, when he got a 6-page paper, Cauchy couldn't take it seriously.

So Abel waited in Paris to no avail, and caught a cold, so he had no choice but to return to Norway.

Later, he studied academics while working as a substitute teacher, and finally perfected the theory of elliptic functions before Jacobi, and he became famous just now.

Jacobi was one of Gauss' apprentices, and it was at that time that Gauss recalled the letter:

Abel really solved a big problem in mathematics with six pages of manuscript!

So Gauss quickly wrote to the University of Berlin, hoping to hire Abel as a professor.

At the same time, four academicians of the Academy of Sciences in France directly wrote to the King of Norway, hoping to confer a knighthood on Abel.

If this is a novel written by me eating tomatoes, then the story should end with a perfect and harmonious ending so far.

pity

Destiny likes to watch probably the works of the Jiangnan old thief.

So just like the old thief sword Erika, fate ruthlessly gave Abel another knife:

What he had in Paris was not a cold, but hematogenously disseminated tuberculosis, which was more serious than Ramanujan's.

In the past few years, Abel didn't even pay for the medicine, so when the disease broke out again, he was powerless to say goodbye to the world.

Died at the age of 26.

And in this short period of 26 years.

Abel left behind Abel integral, Abel function, Abel integral equation, Abel group, Abel series, Abel partial sum formula, Abel fundamental theorem, Abel limit theorem, Abel summable A series of theorems or concepts such as sex.

His ranking in the history of mathematics can be ranked around 15, according to Mr. Qiu Chengtong's evaluation:

"If he (Abel) lived for 40 years longer, Fermat's last theorem, which has plagued the mathematics world for more than 400 years, may not be able to be proved by Wiles."

The fall of Abel was also one of the few pain points in Gauss' life.

In the study.

Looking at the letter in Xu Yun's hand, Gauss let out a long sigh, and his figure became a little stooped:

"I have been blaming myself all these years. If I had been more patient and read this letter, Abel's life trajectory might not have been so miserable."

"I may not be the culprit or pusher, but I have actually influenced the trajectory of Abel's life."

"So I have always regarded this incident as a great regret, and it is hard to let go every time I think about it."

Looking at Gauss who was a little sluggish, Xu Yun didn't speak.

be honest.

There were many reasons for Abel's untimely death, but one was to be expected:

That is, if Gauss had read this letter and recommended Abel to a German university.

Then Abel will at least not go to Paris again.

If he didn’t go to Paris, he wouldn’t encounter the Paris flu of 1825, and the probability of getting hematogenously disseminated tuberculosis would also be greatly reduced.

So what Gauss said that he indirectly caused Abel's fall is indeed true in a sense.

But on the other hand.

Gauss's choice to snub the letter was also justifiable.

Because of Gauss' status at the time, 99% of the contents of those letters were boring civil science or harassment.

Just like the mailbox of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in later generations, the content is either to solve the curvature bubble or to solve the controllable nuclear fusion. If you are lucky, you can see the annihilation of antimatter.

In this case, it is really unrealistic for you to ask Gauss to read the past one by one.

Therefore, Abel's life is completely a tease of fate.

Abel missed all the nodes that could change the trajectory of his fate, and finally walked into the abyss step by step.

Later generations have a more extreme statement, the content is very simple:

Galois is stupid, and Abel is poor.

Then Gauss turned his attention to the letter in Xu Yun's hand, sighed, and said to Xu Yun:

"Student Luo Feng, I'm 73 years old now. My family knows about my family affairs. I'm afraid I will return to heaven in a short time."

"No matter how big the regret is, there will be no chance to regret or reflect in the future."

Then he moved his gaze up from the envelope and looked at Xu Yun:

"But Luo Feng, you are different. You are still young, and you still have a long way to go."

"So after much hesitation, I decided to send this letter to you."

"The discussion on solving the one-dimensional quintic equation in the manuscript is no longer an unsolved mystery to today's mathematics community, so the academic value of the letter is not high, but it is of extraordinary significance in some respects."

"I hope you don't miss this kind of regret in your future life. Of course, don't be someone else's regret."

"In addition, if you encounter any math problems in the future, you can come to me at any time."

Xu Yun was silent for a long time before nodding his head heavily:

"I see, Professor Gauss."

"professor?"

Gauss's decibel suddenly increased a bit, and he pointed to the manuscript on the table, and then to the letter in Xu Yun's hand:

"Student Luo Feng, I gave you so many things, and you still call me a professor?"

Xu Yun was slightly taken aback, but soon, he realized something.

He glanced at the letter in his hand, took a deep breath, and said:

"I see, Mr. Gauss."