Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician's Journey Through Symmetry by Sautoy Marcus du

Author:Sautoy, Marcus du [Sautoy, Marcus du]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780007380879
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

He went on to demand that Lacroix and Poisson either own up to having lost the latest manuscript or at least indicate whether they intended to report on it to the Academy.

His despair at the failings of the establishment eventually bubbled over with spectacular consequences. On 9 May, members of the Société des Amis du Peuple invited two hundred fellow Republicans to a banquet to celebrate the recent release from custody of several members of their organization. A charge had been brought against 19 members for sporting the uniform of the National Guard after the decree by the King that the Guard should disband. The not-guilty verdict at their trial had elevated the 19 to the status of national heroes.

The party resounded to the popping of champagne corks and an increasingly daring series of speeches and toasts to the Republican movement. Galois, fired by an excessive amount of alcohol and the charged political atmosphere, jumped to his feet, spurred on by his young contemporaries. He raised his glass and shouted, ‘To Louis-Philippe!’ Several guests began to jeer him for toasting the King they wanted to depose. But then several others noticed a glint from Galois’s other hand. It was a small dagger. Galois’s toast was an outright threat on the King’s life. The jeers turned to cheers, and the banqueting hall erupted. Several of the less extreme Republicans realized that the party was turning dangerous, and leapt from the restaurant’s windows to escape before the troops arrived.

The next day, Galois was arrested for incitement and threatening the life of the King. He was brought to trial on 15 June but managed to escape a prison sentence thanks to the quick thinking of his defence lawyer. Despite Galois’s wish to be sacrificed for the Republican cause and be sent down as a martyr, his lawyer protested that Galois had in fact qualified his threat. In the disturbance that followed his initial cry of ‘to Louis-Philippe’, the guests had missed him add ‘if he turns traitor’. His lawyer argued that Galois was just considering a hypothetical situation and hadn’t intended to make any threat against the King’s life. But this had been lost in the commotion that had erupted following Galois’s first words.

The incident did end up having mathematical repercussions. To support their friend at his trial, the Chevalier brothers published an article in Le Globe, a newspaper sympathetic to the Saint-Simonian movement. In it they deplored any recourse to violence, and threats to the King’s life, but offered various mitigating circumstances: Galois was a mathematical genius whose work had been ignored or lost by the establishment. ‘He felt the germs of a brilliant future but with neither protectors nor friends, he nurtured violent hatred of the regime,’ they wrote. The article documented the many times Galois had submitted his ideas for comment at the Academy but had received no response. Even now, the manuscript was with ‘M. Poisson who is to examine it but the wretched author has been waiting for a kind word from the Academy for more than five months’.

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