Thursday, July 2, 2015

Évariste Opera moodsetter #1: The duel at dawn

A moodsetter for my Évariste Opera:
From the book "The duel at dawn":

"In the fog of a Paris dawn in 1832, Évariste Galois, the 20-year-old founder of modern algebra, was shot and killed in a duel. That gunshot [...] marked the end of one era in mathematics and the beginning of another. [...] not even the purest mathematics can be separated from its cultural background, [...] In the eighteenth century [...] mathematicians were idealized as child-like, eternally curious, and uniquely suited to reveal the hidden harmonies of the world. But in the nineteenth century, brilliant mathematicians like Galois became Romantic heroes like poets, artists, and musicians. The ideal mathematician was now an alienated loner, driven to despondency by an uncomprehending world. A field that had been focused on the natural world now sought to create its own reality." 


http://www.amazon.com/Duel-Dawn-Mathematics-Histories-Technology/dp/0674046617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435837522&sr=8-1&keywords=duel+at+dawn

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