Niels Henrik Abel proved the quintic unsolvable, founded the theory of elliptic functions, and died of tuberculosis at twenty-six, two days before the letter arrived offering him his first professorship. Gösta Mittag-Leffler’s Niels Henrik Abel tells that story with the authority of a great mathematician and the tenderness of a countryman of the North.
Abel’s is the most affecting life in mathematics, and this short French account is among its classic tellings. Download the free EPUB — ‘il a laissé aux mathématiciens de quoi s’occuper pendant cinq cents ans.’