Lord Kelvin

to the

Abel Committee

Aix les Bains, Savoie

The first thirty years of the nineteenth century will for ever be famous in the history of science as the Augustan era of physical mathematics; the era of fruition of the powers inherited from the great mathematicians of the eighteenth century, of whom Lagrange, Legendre and Laplace were still living and working in Paris. It was the era of Fourier’s creation of a new and rich province in pure mathematics, to which he was led by the demands of physical science. It was the era of Gauss and Fresnel, Cauchy and Poisson, Poinsot and Sadi Carnot, Green and Jacobi. Truly there were giants in those days, but in pure mathematics none greater than Abel, who was born, lived, and died within those thirty years. When we contemplate the greatness of his work it is scarcely possible to conceive that he was only twenty-seven years when he died. His genius was discovered by the University of Christiania during his student years there, which commenced in 1821.

In 1828 a letter addressed to the young unknown man of genius by the veteran Legendre, the founder of the theory of elliptic functions, drew from Abel, then slowly dying of neglect and poverty, a most touching acknowledgment. Later in the same year a letter was addressed to the King of Sweden by four members of the French Institute – Legendre, Poisson, Lacroix, and Maurice, – recommending Abel for a University appointment in Stockholm, and the Prussian Government offered him a place of distinction in Berlin, but he died before the offer could reach him. The pathetic story of the short life of Abel calls forth profound sympathy among scientific men in all parts of the world, who now offer congratulations to Norway and to the University of Christiania for having given to science the grand monument of his work which we have in Abelian functions; and who join in celebrating the hundreth anniversary of Abel.

Kelvin

Dean of Faculties, University of Glasgow,

August, 1902

[Copied from Aftenposten September 7, 1902.] NVJ