5 ms·

Évariste Galois

51 points by areoform 3y ago

acomar 3y ago
he was extremely insightful and developed new math so effortlessly. if he'd survived, a lot of math would have advanced more quickly than it did.
- dylan604 3y ago
  or he just peaked early. there's no way to know that he would have had any more insights, as well as no way of knowing if he wouldn't. he didn't, and that's all we have. Einstein gave us GR, yet lived a long life to be known for something he did in his much younger days.
  - bionsystem 3y ago
    While I agree with the Einstein argument, odds are that a talented young scientist, given enough years to live, has some good chances to find more than his early carrier findings. At least his odds are better than if he dies young...
__rito__ 3y ago
I recently read a really nice short overview of Galois' life. This was in Simon Singh’s book- Fermat's Last Theorem. I highly recommend the whole book as well, as well as his "Code Book".
- Daver555 3y ago
  +2 for two solid recommendations.
- flopsamjetsam 3y ago
  Recently finished his FMT book. I thought he did a great job of showing the process of discovery in an accessible way, as well as all the interesting (and historical) characters who contributed.
- timetraveller26 3y ago
  Yeah, I have to say that book, and the Galois history in particular had a big impact in my life. I still get the chills thinking of him writing frenetically on his last night. Also I want to recommend Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, another one of my favorite books.
  - __rito__ 3y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation. Will surely check it out.
coprogram 3y ago
Based on his achievements before the age of 20, I'm going to assume that the person who killed him was a time traveller.
_8j50 3y ago
The person who invented the math we use every day in aes-gcm died in a duel and participated in the french revolution. That's pretty wild. I had an unpopular comment about not using your age to prop up your work (17 or 70, who cares) from what I can tell you were not considered a child prodigy or abnormally accomplished even back in the day for doing things in late teens and early twenties. Alexander the great did most of his conquering by 25. The concept if a teenager is very modern. After like 13 you were a man/woman as much as any other.
- aaplok 3y ago
  Galois didn't take part in the French revolution, he was born well after. On the other hand it is true that there was a lot of turmoil in French politics during his time, and that he was pretty radicalized himself.
  - betenoire 3y ago
    > Galois was a staunch republican and was heavily involved in the political turmoil that surrounded the French Revolution of 1830.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > Galois didn't take part in the French revolution, he was born well after. He was involved in the July revolution of 1830, which overthrew Charles X and put Louis-Philippe on the throne (though Galois was a republican, and he did not do much). So he was part of a French Revolution, just not that of 1789.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nitnelave 3y ago
Leave it to a French revolutionary to theorize about the decomposition of a group into left and right Cosettes
fuzztester 3y ago
I had seen this company web site some years ago. https://galois.com/ https://galois.com/
lgessler 3y ago
Nobody asked, but here's a syntactic parse of a portion of this article in Universal Dependencies done by yours truly :) https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/dep/GUM_bio_galois.conllu https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/dep/GUM_bio_g...
- zozbot234 3y ago
  What's the licensing status for this data? Not sure if you're aware of this, but Wikipedia is working on pretty-printing encyclopedic English text (or natural language text more generally) starting from a language-independent, semantic ("frame" based) compositional representation, and Universal Dependencies is expected to be an important part of the solution. See e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-09-03 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2... . It would be especially compelling from this POV to have UD parses of short snippets of public domain text, e.g. famous historical quotations, known idioms, proverbs etc. These parses could then be added directly to Wikidata's lexicographical ("lexeme") data set.
  - lgessler 3y ago
    CC BY SA 3.0: https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/LICENSE.txt I didn't know about that project, that's really cool! I'd be curious to know whether the person who devised this scheme was aware of structured meaning representations (UCCA, AMR, ...), and if so, why they chose to create a new meaning representation. Maybe the goals of the project and/or the constraints of Wikidata necessitated this. Anyway, GUM (and its sister corpus EWT) does have a lot of parsed permissively-licensed text, so whoever's in charge should definitely consider using them. (Amir, the maintainer, is also super friendly and would respond to an email.)
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      > UCCA, AMR, ... Are descriptions for these available anywhere? (The articles on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Conceptual_Cognitive_Annotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Conceptual_Cognitive... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Meaning_Representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Meaning_Representatio... are not very helpful.) I did find an interesting description of UMR https://github.com/umr4nlp/umr-guidelines/blob/master/guidelines.md https://github.com/umr4nlp/umr-guidelines/blob/master/guidel... , which looks like it might be intended as a generalization of AMR and quite in line w/ what the project is looking for.
fuzztester 3y ago
Was Galois killed by a group in a field? And who was the ringleader? Just said in fun, as wordplay. See below. A pity he was killed. Who knows what other mathematical discoveries he might have made. I studied group theory in school.It included groups, rings and fields. I liked the subject. It was fairly easy, and fun. Properties of addition of integers like commutativity and associativity descend from group theory, because integers form a group, IIRC. My math is rusty, so correct me, anyone.
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Fairly easy, you definitely had good teachers xD
jablongo 3y ago
The fact that there is no Galois movie represents an abject failure on the part of all hollywood directors and producers

51 points by areoform 3y ago

he was extremely insightful and developed new math so effortlessly. if he'd survived, a lot of math would have advanced more quickly than it did.

dylan604 3y ago
or he just peaked early. there's no way to know that he would have had any more insights, as well as no way of knowing if he wouldn't. he didn't, and that's all we have. Einstein gave us GR, yet lived a long life to be known for something he did in his much younger days.
- bionsystem 3y ago
  While I agree with the Einstein argument, odds are that a talented young scientist, given enough years to live, has some good chances to find more than his early carrier findings. At least his odds are better than if he dies young...

__rito__ 3y ago

I recently read a really nice short overview of Galois' life. This was in Simon Singh’s book- Fermat's Last Theorem. I highly recommend the whole book as well, as well as his "Code Book".

Daver555 3y ago
+2 for two solid recommendations.
flopsamjetsam 3y ago
Recently finished his FMT book. I thought he did a great job of showing the process of discovery in an accessible way, as well as all the interesting (and historical) characters who contributed.
timetraveller26 3y ago
Yeah, I have to say that book, and the Galois history in particular had a big impact in my life. I still get the chills thinking of him writing frenetically on his last night. Also I want to recommend Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, another one of my favorite books.
- __rito__ 3y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. Will surely check it out.

coprogram 3y ago

Based on his achievements before the age of 20, I'm going to assume that the person who killed him was a time traveller.

_8j50 3y ago

The person who invented the math we use every day in aes-gcm died in a duel and participated in the french revolution. That's pretty wild. I had an unpopular comment about not using your age to prop up your work (17 or 70, who cares) from what I can tell you were not considered a child prodigy or abnormally accomplished even back in the day for doing things in late teens and early twenties. Alexander the great did most of his conquering by 25. The concept if a teenager is very modern. After like 13 you were a man/woman as much as any other.

aaplok 3y ago
Galois didn't take part in the French revolution, he was born well after. On the other hand it is true that there was a lot of turmoil in French politics during his time, and that he was pretty radicalized himself.
- betenoire 3y ago
  > Galois was a staunch republican and was heavily involved in the political turmoil that surrounded the French Revolution of 1830.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > Galois didn't take part in the French revolution, he was born well after. He was involved in the July revolution of 1830, which overthrew Charles X and put Louis-Philippe on the throne (though Galois was a republican, and he did not do much). So he was part of a French Revolution, just not that of 1789.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nitnelave 3y ago

Leave it to a French revolutionary to theorize about the decomposition of a group into left and right Cosettes

fuzztester 3y ago

I had seen this company web site some years ago. https://galois.com/ https://galois.com/

lgessler 3y ago

Nobody asked, but here's a syntactic parse of a portion of this article in Universal Dependencies done by yours truly :) https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/dep/GUM_bio_galois.conllu https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/dep/GUM_bio_g...

zozbot234 3y ago
What's the licensing status for this data? Not sure if you're aware of this, but Wikipedia is working on pretty-printing encyclopedic English text (or natural language text more generally) starting from a language-independent, semantic ("frame" based) compositional representation, and Universal Dependencies is expected to be an important part of the solution. See e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2021-09-03 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2... . It would be especially compelling from this POV to have UD parses of short snippets of public domain text, e.g. famous historical quotations, known idioms, proverbs etc. These parses could then be added directly to Wikidata's lexicographical ("lexeme") data set.
- lgessler 3y ago
  CC BY SA 3.0: https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/amir-zeldes/gum/blob/master/LICENSE.txt I didn't know about that project, that's really cool! I'd be curious to know whether the person who devised this scheme was aware of structured meaning representations (UCCA, AMR, ...), and if so, why they chose to create a new meaning representation. Maybe the goals of the project and/or the constraints of Wikidata necessitated this. Anyway, GUM (and its sister corpus EWT) does have a lot of parsed permissively-licensed text, so whoever's in charge should definitely consider using them. (Amir, the maintainer, is also super friendly and would respond to an email.)
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    > UCCA, AMR, ... Are descriptions for these available anywhere? (The articles on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Conceptual_Cognitive_Annotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Conceptual_Cognitive... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Meaning_Representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Meaning_Representatio... are not very helpful.) I did find an interesting description of UMR https://github.com/umr4nlp/umr-guidelines/blob/master/guidelines.md https://github.com/umr4nlp/umr-guidelines/blob/master/guidel... , which looks like it might be intended as a generalization of AMR and quite in line w/ what the project is looking for.

fuzztester 3y ago

Was Galois killed by a group in a field? And who was the ringleader? Just said in fun, as wordplay. See below. A pity he was killed. Who knows what other mathematical discoveries he might have made. I studied group theory in school.It included groups, rings and fields. I liked the subject. It was fairly easy, and fun. Properties of addition of integers like commutativity and associativity descend from group theory, because integers form a group, IIRC. My math is rusty, so correct me, anyone.

g-b-r 3y ago
Fairly easy, you definitely had good teachers xD

jablongo 3y ago

The fact that there is no Galois movie represents an abject failure on the part of all hollywood directors and producers