Chapter 307 I, Luo Feng, have been wandering for half my life...
In the study room.
Looking at Gauss with a complex and solemn expression.
The curiosity in Xu Yun's heart, which was already close to reaching its peak, couldn't help but become more and more powerful.
According to data from the Gauss Museum at the University of Göttingen.
Until 2022.
The museum has collected a total of 68 letters sent or received by Gauss.
Among them, Gauss was the recipient of 41 letters, and Gauss was the sender of the other 27 letters.
The number of the former is basically fixed, while the number of the latter will increase by one or two every few years:
Gauss was already famous all over the world while he was alive, so many of his letters have been preserved and collected.
Some of these letters are considered family heirlooms.
Some are kept secretly by collectors and do not choose to publish them until their death.
No one except God knows how many letters Gauss has in total existence.
And in these letters coming and going.
The most famous letter is recognized as a letter home from Gauss to his son-in-law Heinrich Ewald.
Heinrich Ewald, like Weber, was one of the famous Seven Gentlemen of Göttingen.
The time when Gauss wrote the letter was November 1837, a few days before the German version of the "Bus Letter".
In this letter he told Heinrich Evard:
He personally does not agree with Heinrich Ewald's approach. If he can wait for the opportunity, there may be changes.
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 and to complete his 'mission' even at the cost of his life.
At the same time, if something happened to Heinrich Ewald and Weber, he would bear the future living expenses of their families without having to worry about trivial matters such as money.
This letter does not involve academic matters, but it shows Gauss's character vividly:
Be cautious and cautious, and focus on stability in everything, but as long as you choose a direction, you will never look back.
Don't be gullible, but believe and keep your promise.
Apart from this letter home, most of Gauss's other letters involve academic matters:
For example, a letter discussing the semicircular shadow problem with Lagrange, a letter stating that he discovered the method of least squares before Legendre, etc...
There are about seven or eight important letters in the second level.
The letter that Gauss gave to Xu Yun was obviously not sent out, so who could be the person who wrote the letter?
Lobachevsky, the first proposer of non-Euclidean geometry?
Or Cosey?
Or some other authority?
But can these people really make Gauss show his previous emotions?
With this mentality in mind, Xu Yun accepted the letter from Gauss.
The envelope of the letter was dark yellow in color, felt brittle when I received it, and exuded an old smell.
I think it's been some years.
On the dark yellow cover of the envelope, there is information about the letter:
recipient:
Professor Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Recipient address:
Email address of Professor, Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany.
mailing address:
Department of Classical Mathematics Building, University of Oslo, Norway.
sender:
Niels Henrik Abel.
etc?!
The moment he 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 Halo clearly translated it into Chinese characters:
Niels 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 headline:
"The argumentation process about the fact that the quintic equation of one variable has no algebraic general solution".
Xu Yun's eyes stayed on this title for a long time, then he slowly raised his head and said to Gauss thoughtfully:
"Professor Gauss, could this letter be..."
Gauss nodded with a heavy face and exhaled a complex breath, confirming Xu Yun's guess:
"Yes, Abel once wrote me a letter in 1824, in which he successfully demonstrated that there is no algebraic general solution to the fifth equation, but..."
"But I threw this letter in the corner and never opened it."
"I didn't know about this until he perfected the theory of elliptic functions before Jacobi, so I immediately contacted him for a professorship at the University of Berlin, but it was too late - when the University of Berlin sent out the offer letter
By that time, Abel had been dead for two days."
"So I have been keeping this letter, always reminding myself that I had made such a big mistake, which indirectly led to the fall of a mathematical genius."
Seeing Gauss with a look of regret and remorse, Xu Yun felt 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 human mathematics.
The death of three young people is most regrettable.
They are Galois, Ramanujan and Abel.
Among them, the situation of Galois was briefly introduced once before. A considerable part of his death was attributed to his political character.
In fact, Galois came from a very good background. His father was a mayor, his mother was also a parliamentarian, and his university tutor was the famous Cauchy.
But precisely because of the strong political atmosphere in the family, Galois was trained to be a political fanatic from an early age.
This kind of character caused Kexi to be dissatisfied with this student.
Although he frequently communicated with Galois to encourage him, he never introduced his contacts to Galois.
Later, Galois encountered a political conspiracy, and eventually died in a duel.
The cause of Ramanujan's death was psychological and physical illness:
He was first diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917, and at the end of the same year he was unable to return home due to 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 eventually died of illness in Madras in 1920.
Both Galois and Ramanujan left a lot of wealth to mankind, which makes people feel regretful every time they think about it.
For example, Galois wrote 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 devoted themselves to the study of Ramanujan's manuscripts, and it was not until 1997 that part of it was finally completed and published in five volumes.
And if we say that the causes of death of Galois and Ramanujan were more or less due to their own factors.
Then Abel's fall 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 relied on his talent to become self-taught.
As an adult, Abel is known as one of the most handsome mathematicians, and his looks are as good as those of Planck when he was young. (You can go look for photos, he is really handsome)
Abel's father died when he was 18 years old, and Abel, who was still in college, suddenly had to shoulder the burden of taking care of the family.
Fortunately.
The teachers at the University of Oslo where he was studying did not give up on this genius, and together they supported Abel.
As for Abel, he rewarded them with results.
In Abel's time, solving quintic equations was a very hot topic.
While Abel was studying, the closest result in mathematics to a correct answer was a discussion by an Italian mathematician named Ruffini.
That discussion ran to more than 500 pages, but it still did not give 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 fifth degree equation, and also made some supplements to Ruffini's discussion - the reason why Abel only used six pages was because he did not have much money to pay for printing.
It's a waste...
Later, Abel sent these six pages of manuscript to a person, hoping to be appreciated by the other person.
That's right.
This person is Gauss...
However, fate played another joke on Abel.
In the words of the novel, Gauss in 1824 was almost at the peak of the Great Perfection of Semi-Saints. He was about to break through to the holy level and was the only Semi-Saint in the world.
So naturally, he received a large number of letters every day - according to Gauss's own account, he received up to more than 3,000 letters a year.
Students who have taken the college entrance examination in later generations should all know this.
When teachers introduce college entrance examination essays, they often tell you one thing:
Since there are so many essays for the college entrance examination, marking teachers often just scan them in a hurry and grade them quickly based on the handwriting and beginning.
There is only one word difference between Gauss and College Entrance Examination, so Gauss used a similar method when reading the letter:
He will first read the handwriting and title, and then decide whether to continue reading based on the beginning content.
And Abel's handwriting...
Put it this way.
Compared with Abel's calligraphy, Lao Ai can be considered a great calligrapher.
In addition, Abel also added a self-effacing content at the beginning, so Gauss naturally had a feeling at that time:
The wording is ugly and the beginning is long-winded. You can solve the problem that others haven't solved in 500 pages in only six pages?
So Gauss naturally threw the letter aside and ignored it.
Abel, who did not wait for Gauss's reply, wandered around and arrived in Paris for the second time, where he handed his manuscript to the French Academy of Sciences.
The secretary of the Academy of Sciences was shocked after reading the manuscript and gave it to Cauchy for review.
That's right.
It's Cauchy again.
But everyone knows that in addition to being highly productive, Kexi also has another characteristic in writing:
The papers he wrote were all very long.
For this reason, mathematics magazines did not have enough space to publish his paper, so he was furious and created a special issue to publish his paper.
So when he got a 6-page paper, Cauchy couldn't bring himself to take it seriously.
So Abel waited in Paris to no avail, and even caught a cold, so he had no choice but to return to Norway.
Later, he worked as a substitute teacher while studying academics. In the end, he perfected the theory of elliptic functions before Jacobi, and he became famous.
Jacobi was one of Gauss's apprentices. 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 members of the French Academy of Sciences wrote directly to the King of Norway, hoping to knight Abel.
If this was a novel written by me eating tomatoes, then the story should have been filled with joys and sorrows and end with a perfect and harmonious ending.
pity.......
What Destiny likes to read is probably the works of the old Jiangnan thieves.
So just like the old thief Dao Eriyi, fate ruthlessly dealt Abel another knife:
What he got in Paris was not a cold, but a more serious form of hematogenous tuberculosis than Ramanujan.
In the past few years, Abel had not even been able to pay for medication, so when the disease broke out again, he left this world helplessly.
He was 26 years old.
And in this short period of 26 years.
Abel left Abelian integrals, Abelian functions, Abelian integral equations, Abelian groups, Abelian series, Abelian partial sum formulas, Abelian fundamental theorem, Abelian limit theorem, Abelian summability for the mathematical world.
properties and a series of theorems or concepts.
His ranking in the history of mathematics can be ranked around 15th. To use Mr. Qiu Chengtong’s evaluation:
"If he (Abel) had lived forty more years, Fermat's last theorem, which had troubled the mathematical world for more than four hundred years, might not have been proved by Wiles."
Abel's fall was one of the few pain points in Gauss's life.
In the study room.
Looking at the letter in Xu Yun's hand, Gauss sighed and his body became a little rickety:
"I have been blaming myself for these years. If I had been more patient and read this letter, Abel's life trajectory might not have been so miserable."
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! "I may not be the culprit or the driving force, but I have really influenced Abel's life trajectory."
"So I have always regarded this incident as a big regret, and I can't let it go every time I think about it."
Looking at Gauss, who was looking quite sluggish, Xu Yun said nothing.
be honest.
There are many reasons for Abel's untimely death, but one thing is predictable:
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 had not gone to Paris, he would not have encountered the Paris Flu of 1825, and the probability of getting blood-borne tuberculosis would have been greatly reduced.
Therefore, 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 ignore this letter is equally understandable.
Because of Gauss's status at the time, 99% of the contents of those letters were boring civil affairs or harassment.
Just like the mailbox of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in later generations, the content either solved the curvature bubble or achieved controllable nuclear fusion. If you are lucky, you can also see antimatter annihilation and so on...
In this case, it is really unrealistic for you to ask Gauss to read each letter individually.
Therefore, Abel's life is completely a tease of fate.
Abel missed all the nodes that could change the trajectory of his destiny, and finally walked towards the abyss step by step.
Later generations had a rather extreme statement, which was very simple:
Galois was stupid and Abel was poor.
Then Gauss turned his attention to the letter in Xu Yun's hand, sighed, and said to Xu Yun:
"Classmate Luo Feng, I am now 73 years old. My family knows my own affairs. I am afraid that it will not be long before my soul returns to heaven."
"No matter how big the regret is, there will be no chance to regret or reflect on it 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 in the future."
"So after much hesitation, I decided to send this letter to you."
"The solution to the fifth equation in the manuscript is no longer an unsolved mystery for today's mathematical community, so the academic value of the letter is not high, but its significance in some aspects is extraordinary."
"I hope that in your future life... you will not miss this kind of regret again, and of course, you will not become the regret of others."
"Besides, if you encounter any math problems in the future, you can always come to me."
Xu Yun was silent for a long time, and then nodded heavily:
"I understand, Professor Gauss."
"professor?"
Gauss's decibel suddenly rose a few points. He pointed at the manuscript on the table and then at the letter in Xu Yun's hand:
"Classmate Luo Feng, I have given you so many things, and you still call me professor?"
Xu Yun was slightly startled, but soon he realized something.
He glanced at the letter in his hand, took a deep breath, and said:
