The rare genius who appears once in a century.
Évariste Galois was killed in 1832 at the young age of 20 in a duel, reportedly over a woman.
The night before the duel, he stayed up writing a long letter, about 60 pages, explaining his mathematical ideas.
Years later, in 1846, the mathematician Liouville published his work on what we now call group theory. However, it was not fully understood until around 1870, when Camille Jordan explained its true meaning and importance.
Unlike Gauss, who often posed problems that others later solved, all of Galois’s work was completely original and far ahead of its time.
Now imagine a different story. Suppose Galois had survived the duel and lived just five more years. After such a close call, he might have taken the time to clearly explain all his ideas. This could have sped up the development of group theory by about 40 years. More importantly, great mathematicians of that time would have had the chance to work on his ideas. Imagine if Gauss and Riemann had access to Galois’s work. It would be like giving a scientist from the past a modern computer to solve complex problems.
If that had happened, it is possible that important theories in physics, like magnetism and relativity, might have been developed earlier. Even Cantor, who later worked on infinity and set theory, might have reached his discoveries sooner and gone even further.
Galois’s early death likely delayed the progress of mathematics by decades, especially during a key period before the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics.