Niels Henrik Abel 


Used with permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA, http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps


    

Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829) was a Norwegian mathematician of great talent whose work was in analysis and elliptic functions. He proved that it was impossible to solve algebraically an equation of the fifth degree. Always poor, he died of tuberculosis at an early age, just before the news of an important appointment in Berlin could reach him.