Thread by @gautambhatia88

Re-reading Whom The Gods Love tonight, and is it even possible to get through this gorgeous prose without tearing up?

"Yes, I wish to die and I find it pleasant. I have lived my life. I have achieved some fame as a mathematician. I never hated anyone. I did no wrong, and it will be good to die.”

- last words of Lagrange

"The government tried to stop these arguments by dragging before the courts those who “threw contempt upon persons or things connected with religion.” Yet in most cases the accused were freed by the judges, after which their language became still more violent and abusive."

He entered this new path alone, without friends, without encouragement, without understanding from anyone. Mathematics seemed to him an experience too great, too intimate, to personal to be shared. Only to himself he repeated proudly in his thought, “I am a mathematician.”

"The secret of M. Richard’s success with students was very simple and consisted in one guiding principle: to treat them as equals."

"He did remember now that some time ago he had thrown away another manuscript. But unfortunately this foreign name stuck in his mind. Why was he so stupid as to read it? A curious name, a Biblical name, very difficult to forget. Yes, it was Abel’s manuscript."

"Louis XVIII once said about his brother, Comte d’Artois, “He conspired against Louis XVI, he conspires against me, he will conspire against himself.” And conspire he did!"

"It was the voice of Charras, a former student who had been expelled from the Polytechnical School five months before for singing the Marseillaise five months too soon."

The lofty speech of the great scientist and liberal was interrupted.

“Shut up! We don’t want to listen to you.”

Arago became excited.

“Don’t you understand that I share your views?”

“Men with coats of different cloth can’t have the same views.”

"The transitions from light to shadows were sharp, disappearing and reappearing to the rhythm of the passing clouds. Here the greatest mathematician then living in France chose to lecture on his theories to all who wished to listen."

"The government wanted first to establish a principle to prove that conspiracy was punishable, before prosecuting other Republican leaders."

"Here, on the Place de Greve, they were to plant trees of liberty in memory of that liberty which always seemed near enough to be won today and far enough to be fought for again tomorrow."

“On the walls of your pistole you drew a head and a guillotine, and you wrote underneath ‘Philippe will yield his head on your altar, oh Liberty!’ Is this true?”

“I did not draw a head; I drew a pear.”

"By calling it “preventive” they made it nonexistent in the eyes of the law. But it was as real and as horrid as any imprisonment served after sentence."

"“You are a mathematician.” He whistled. “Fancy that! A real mathematician.” He whistled again. “Never saw one in my life before. Never knew that nowadays they put mathematicians in prison."

“I had thought before I met you that men like you ought to be hanged from the first lamppost, that bullets are too good for them. I still believe in the principle, but I would not like to see the prescription applied to you.”

On July 2 1832, Galois’ friends carried his coffin to a common burial ground that is unknown today. 3000 Republicans listened to orations that praised Galois’ Republican virtues. 77 years later, French mathematicians, Academicians, officials paid homage to Galois’ genius.

+

During these intervening years France fought wars and revolutions, overthrew its kingdom, its second Republic, its second Empire, and the Paris Commune, finally to build and rebuild its third Republic. +

During these intervening years, Galois’ mathematical results were printed, discussed, and taught; they influenced the development of modern mathematics."