Abel's Proof

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Abel's Proof

An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability

Peter Pesic

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Palatino by Interactive Composition Corporation and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Permission for the use of the figures has been kindly given by the following: Dover Publications (figures 2.1, 3.1); Conservation Departmentale de Musees de Vendee (figure 2.2); Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, Norway (figure 6.1); Francisco Gonzalez de Posada (figure 10.1, which appeared in Investigaci6ny Ciencia,July 1990, page 82); Robert W. Gray (figure 8.3); Lucent TechnologIes, Inc.! Bell Labs (figure 10.2); NatIOnal LIbrary of Norway, Oslo Division (figure 10.3). I am grateful to Jean Buck (Wolfram Research), Peter M. Busichio and Edward J Eckert (Bell I abs/I llCent Technology), Judy Feldmann, Chryseis Fox, John Grafton (Dover Publications), Thomas Hull, Nils Klitkou (National Library of Norway, Oslo Division), Purificaci6n Mayoral (Investigaci6n y Ciencia),George Nichols, Lisa Reeve, Yngvar Reichelt (Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo), Mary Reilly, and Ssu Weng for their help with the figures. Special thanks to Wan-go Weng for his calligraphy of the Chinese character ssu (meaning "thought") on the dedication page. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pesic, Peter. Abel's proof: an essay on the sources and meaning of mathematical unsolvability / Peter Pesic. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-16216-4 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Equations, roots of. 2. Abel, Niels Henrik, 1802-1829. 1. Title. QA212 .P47 2003 512.9'4--dc21

2002031991

Contents

Introduction

1 The Scandal of the Irrational 2

3

5
23

Controversy and Coefficients Impossibilities and Imaginaries Spirals and Seashores

59

47

5 Premonitions and Permutations 6 Abel's Proof

85

73

Abel and Galois

8

95 111
131 145

Seeing Symmetries

9 The Order of Things 10 Solving the Unsolvable

Vlll

Contents

Appendix A: Abel's 1824 Paper 155 Appendix B: Abel on the General Fonn of an Algebraic Solution 171 Appendix C: Cauchy's Theorem on Permutations 175 Notes 181 Acknowledgments 203 Index 205

The Scandal of the Irrational

The story begins with a secret and a scandal. About 2,500 years ago, in Greece, a philosopher named Pythagoras and his followers adopted the motto "All is number." The Pythagorean brotherhood discovered many important mathematical tr aths and explored the ways they were manifest in the world. Butthey also wrapped themselves in mystery, considering themselves guardians of the secrets of mathematics from the profane world. Because of their secrecy, many details of their work are lost, and even the degree to which they were indebted to prior discoveries made in Mesopotamia and Egypt remains obscure. Those who followed looked back on the Pythagoreans as the source of mathematics. Euclid's masterful compilation, The Elements, written several hundred years later, includes Pythagorean discoveries along with later work, culminating in the construction of the five "Platonic solids," the only solid figures that are regular (having identical equal-sided faces): the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron (figure 1.1). The major contribution of the Pythagoreans, though, was the concept of mathematical proof, the idea that one could construct irrefutable demonstrations of theoretical propositions that would admit of no

Controversy and Coefficients

In his attempt to survey the irrational magnitudes, Euclid was laying out possible solutions of what we now call the quadratic equation. But that statement distorts his own way of understanding these matters and thus is seriously misleading. The ancient Greek mathematicians did not know the word algebra," or the symbolic system we mean by it, even though many of their propositions can be translated into algebraic language. Euclid kept numbers rigorously separate from lines and magnitudes. He might have been horrified by the way algebra mixes rational and irrational, numbers and roots. So, as we prepare to consider the meaning of equations, we need to pause and assess the significance of the mathematical revolution reflected in the rise of algebra as we know it. The word algebra" is Arabic, not Greek, and refers to the joining together of what is broken. Thus, in Don Quixote, Cervantes calls someone who sets broken bones an algebrista. The original Arabic algebraists created recipes for solving different kinds of problems, usually imTolving whole numbers. They worked by presenting examples with solutions, but without the methodical symbolism we now associate with algebra and without the systematic processes of solution that are equally important. They did recognize the logical
II II

Impossibilities and Imaginaries

Van Roomen was so impressed by Viete's astonishing feat that he traveled to France expressly to meet him. Here was a man w 0 c aIme to ave oun t e master art t at wou solve any algebraic problem. Was it really possible that Viete had the tools to solve every possible equation, of whatever degree? In the case of van Roomen's equation of the fortyfifth degree, Viete was lucky, for he recognized that particular equation as closely related to formulas he found in trigonometry. Had van Roomen changed a single coefficient, Viete's solution would no longer have been valid. Clearly, van Roomen had not been envisaging the general problem of solving equations of higher degrees but had come upon that specific equation in the course of his trigonometric studies' and was testing to see if others had discovered it also. Thus, the solution of van Roomen's equation did not after all illuminate the general question of whether all equations are solvable in radicals, and indeed Viete's solution involved trigonometry, which (as we shall see) goes beyond radicals. The tenor of Viete's conviction was clearly that all to solve the quadratic, cubic, and quartic equations. Other