Portrait of the French mathematician Evariste Galois, 1811-1832. Taught by his mother until the age of twelve, he later attended the Ecole Normale Superieure. At 18 he submitted papers breaking new ground in the theory of algebraic equations to the French Academy of Sciences, but they were lost. In the political storm following the 1830 revolution and the abdication of Charles X, Galois made enemies and was imprisoned because of his radical anti-royalist attitudes. His paper on the general solution of equations (now called Galois theory) was rejected. He wrote out his discoveries & the foundation of modern group theory the night before he was mortally wounded in a duel, aged 20.