Are you Galois!!!

It was our mathematics period. Somehow the professor was late, so as usual we were having fun inside the class room. It was a chaos altogether. Suddenly Dr Chatterjee entered the class room and to his surprise a piece of small chalk missed his nose by an inch and hit the wall. Sumit was the culprit. He targeted someone else, but the miss hit almost knocked down Professor Chatterjee.

Professor Chatterjee, the ever smiling teacher of us, turned his head with an angry face and asked “Are you Galois?”

Pin drop silence was all around. Seconds later, Dr Chatterjee burst out laughing.

- “Don’t be scared students; I know that the chalk was not meant for me. Students always enjoy the delay of their professors in the class. And it’s completely my fault that I entered the war front without any notice”.

Our looks were still confused. He read our face quickly and said “Don’t you know Galois?”

By that time we sensed an interesting story is about to set sail. We all shouted together “No, who was he?”

Dr Chatterjee started the story.

In the year 1828, Ecole Normale Superieure was the most prestigious institution for mathematics in France at the time. They had a unique entrance exam named Baccalaureate for those who wanted to pursue Polytechnique. The exam paper always used to have 14 questions where the complexity level increases from question number 1 to 14. Means, question number 1 is the easiest among all and question number 14 is the toughest. They had a cut off marks also which I don’t remember.

Our Mr. Galois appeared for this exam and he answered only question number 12, 13 and 14. At the end he wrote “Rests are trivial”. Though he answered three of the toughest questions, but overall his score was below the cut off, so he didn’t qualify.

Next year, he again appeared in the exam, again he answered last three questions only and wrote “Rests are trivial”. This time professors did notice him. They wondered who that crazy guy was. They called Galois for a personal interview. When they saw a teenage boy entered the class room, they were shocked. They couldn’t digest the fact that this teenage lad had solved those complex stuffs. For further examination, they gave the boy another complex theorem to prove on the black board. Galois started explaining the theorem, but after 10 minutes of explanation he realized that none of the professor was able to understand what exactly he was explaining.

Galois got irritated and threw the chalk and left the class room.

Dr Chatterjee completed the story and sat on the chair.

- “That’s why I asked you my dear student whether you are Galois or not?”

None of us were able to suppress the curiosity to know who this Galois is.

Dr Chatterjee continued, “Galois was one of the most talented young mathematicians the world has ever seen. His work laid the foundations for Galois Theory, a major branch of abstract algebra, and the subfield of Galois connections. He was the first to use the word ‘group’ as a technical term in mathematics to represent a group of permutations. But this young mathematician died only at the age of 21. Definitely the world had lost a potential talent. “

Disclaimer: I heard this story long back from Dr Chatterjee. Honestly I didn't remember each of the facts (those names are damn tough to remember), so I have taken help of wiki and other internet documentation to reconstruct the story. Please correct me if anything is misleading.