Galois from MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.

October 25, 2011 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential mathematicians of all time. Evariste Galois was born in 1811 and died less than 21 years later in 1832. He only published five papers in his short life, but his work lead to the field of math known as "Galois Theory." He gave necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution to a polynomial equation in terms of the coefficients of the polynomial, addition/subtraction, multiplication/ division, and extraction of roots. Galois theory can also be used to demonstrate the nonexistence of solutions to the three compass-and-straight-edge construction problems from classical Greece.

On October 14, "Dr. Bob" Gardner gave a departmental seminar in commemoration of this anniversary. Here are some photos from the seminar and below are links to the talk.

A photo cake commemorating the anniversary

Enthusiastic participant Andrew Young	Arash Mehraban eyes the cake
In attendance: Astronomers, mathematicians, and Beeler.	Mr. White and Ms. Gardner cutting into the cake

In celebration of the bicentennial, we offer the following:

• Advertisement for the talk.
• The presentation in PowerPoint.
• The transcript for the presentation in PDF.
• The presentation is also online in html form.

Return to Bob Gardner's website.