Niels Henrik Abel

Niels Henrik Abel was a Norwegian mathematician who made pioneering contributions in a variety of fields. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation in radicals. This question was one of the outstanding open problems of his day, and had been unresolved for over 250 years. He was also an innovator in the field of elliptic functions, discoverer of Abelian functions. He made his discoveries while living in poverty and died at the age of 26 from tuberculosis.

5 August 1802

Born on the same birth day (5 August): Airto Moreira • Alvin Ceccoli • Antoine Sibierski • Brian G. Marsden • Christopher Gunning • David Hungate • Federica Pellegrini • Herb Brooks • Jeff Coffin • John Olerud • Louis Wain • Mary Ritter Beard • Peter Inge, Baron Inge • Samantha Sang

Born in the same month (August 1802): Husein Gradaščević • Letitia Elizabeth Landon • Nikolaus Lenau