Quotes About Galois

Here, however, is where his genius truly took off. Galois managed to associate with each equation a sort of genetic code of that equation-the Galois group of the equation-and to demonstrate that the properties of the Galois group determine whether the equation is solvable by a formula or not. Symmetry became the key concept, and the Galois group was a direct measure of the symmetry properties of an equation.

Indeed, the genius of Abel and Galois could be compared only to a supernova-an exploding star that for a short while outshines all the billions of stars in its host galaxy.