He simply was too much ahead of his time.

On May 30, 1832 a duel took place in Paris in which a young man — barely twenty years old — was lethally wounded. Much later, he turned out to be one of the greatest mathematical minds in history.

Although it was clear during his lifetime that he had “some” talent as a mathematician, nobody really understood what most of the “gibberish” Galois wrote was really about.

His papers and ideas were often rejected, he wasn’t allowed to enter the highly prestigious École Normale Supérieure, and he was a bit of a hothead as well — especially when not understood yet again.

He simply was too much ahead of his time.

To add insult to injury, he was also deeply involved in the French revolution, and was used to spending time in jail if the action required this.

Galois was a rebel, on the streets, and also in the mathematical mist.

Unfortunately, he was talked into a duel for unknown reasons, but most probably the cause of the dual was a broken love — some say she was a prostitute, others claims she was a married woman — and unfortunately his as-of-today unknown nemesis was a better duelist than he was, as Galois knew only too well.

So the night before the duel, he made the most important decision of his life.

Instead of taking the necessary rest he so desperately needed to have even the slightest chance to survive, he decided to write down his mathematical ideas:

Galois was so convinced of his impending death that he stayed up all night writing letters to his Republican friends and composing what would become his mathematical testament, the famous letter to Auguste Chevalier outlining his ideas, and three attached manuscripts.

In his last letter

, he tersely described revolutionary ideas concerning analysis, continued fractions and group theory — a subject which he single-handedly created to solve one of the greatest mathematical problems of the day: how to (not) polynomials by radicals.

Galois’s group theory has evolved in one of the most important topics in modern day mathematics, and it has penetrated in many other scientific disciplines such as physics and chemistry, quantum theory and applications and much much more.

He was so much ahead.

Galois last written words to his younger brother Alfred were:

“Ne pleure pas, Alfred ! J’ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans !”

(“Don’t weep, Alfred ! I need all my courage to die at twenty !”)

The famous mathematician Hermann Weyl later wrote:

“This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind.”

And to honor Galois, I’d like to think that it actually was.