Speech by
in University Hall
September 6, 1902
May it please your Majesty, your Royal Highness, Rector of the University, President of the Academy of Sciences, Ladies and Gentlemen.
On behalf of those delegates for whom English is the home language, I desire to express our thanks for the cordial welcome we have received. The Rector spoke yesterday of the satisfaction, with which he saw us here and said not a little of the distances which some of us have traversed in order to come to your city. To us, that is a small matter; we rather resemble pilgrims of old, on their way to a sacred shrine. It is the places, round which the memories of great men cling, that are the shrines for men of science; there are few of them in the world, and they can be counted almost on the fingers of two hands; and among them, the country of Abel has an honoured place.
For Abel was one of those great men, a man of genius ranking among the select of the earth. Were I challenged as to some of the characteristics that make us place Abel in the highest class in our mathematical hierarchy, I should point to his profound and penetrating insight, his daring originality, his high courage, his unflinching belief in the loftiness of the works that he could do in life. Is it his insight that is questioned? Consider him as a youth, of an age comparable with the students in your gallery to-day; he attacked and ultimately solved, one of the problems that had defied the greatest of his masters. Is it the daring originality? The Norwegian knows no fear, and has shown this fearlessness through the ages even into the most recent days. Yet I cannot lightly imagine anything more daring than the devotion of his mind and the full activity of his intellect to the exploration of unknown regions of analysis: having no guide save his thoughts, no compass save his intellectual powers, no surmise as to a goal to be reached, no knowledge even on to whether there was any region ultimately attainable. Nor can any one doubt his courage or his inspired yet completely modest belief in the greatness of his task, who reads his letters or who thinks of the course of his life, never easy, not too often cheered by the sympathetic understanding of his aims, yet lived bravely until the last gasp of his life that ended so soon.
But sometimes the greatness of a man is judged by other tests – by the quality and amount of his original work, by the influence that he has exercised upon his own generation or upon the generations, that succeed him. It is idle to speculate, what that might have accomplished, had the thread of his existence spun longer at the wheel of life. For his work in fact, it is enough to consider those two volumes of collected papers, the form of which we owe to the loving care of two of his countrymen and of yours. As to his influence, many instances might be quoted; one will suffice. Now for nearly three quarters of a century, the mathematicians of all countries have worked at a region of analysis upon the foundations made in Abel’s researches; and in doing so, they have erected a monument that will for ever be associated with his name, more durable than any monument worked by the hand of man, for it has been hewn of the thoughts of men.
But Abel is your kith and kin, the loyal son of your country; and many of us here to-day are strangers within your gates, welcomed with generous cordiality, yet strangers within your gates when your thoughts dwell upon Abel. On behalf of the delegates, I return to you our profound and sincere thanks for extending to us the privilege of being associated with you on this celebration. We tender our homage to the man whose memory you rightly treasure, whose memory your children and your children’s children will treasure through the days that are to come. Abel’s achievements were his gift to the whole world: his name remains your possession, eternally and inalienably yours, and yours alone.
May I conclude my remarks with the expression of a wish, I believe is shared by all my colleagues here? Among the generations of students who will pass through the university, there will be many to take their place in the country and the world as distinguished men. Yet even among a long succession of distinguished men, a glorious like Abel’s is rare. I would express the hope, that it may be your happy fortune now and in the future to receive and rear and cherish not a few men of genius, who, by contributing to the reputation of the university, to the glory of the country and the intellectual benefit of the world to have their names placed on the universal roll of fame by the side of the illustrious name of Niels Henrik Abel.
[Copied from Aftenposten September 7, 1902.]