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For
God's sake, please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion,
because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health,
peace of mind and happiness in life. ~ [Bolyai's father urging him to give up work on non-Euclidean geometry.] Quoted in P Davis and R Hersh The Mathematical Experience (Boston 1981)
Died: November 20, 1856 in Marosvásárhely, Transylvania (now Tirgu Mures, Romania) Farkas Bolyai was the father of János Bolyai and studied at Jena, then at Göttingen where he was taught by Kaestner. He became a life long friend of Gauss, a fellow student at Göttingen. He taught mathematics, physics and chemistry at Marosvásárhely all his life. Farkas Bolyai was interested in the foundations of geometry and the parallel axiom. He corresponded with Gauss on the topic most of his life. His main work, the Tentamen, was an attempt at a rigorous and systematic foundation of geometry, arithmetic, algebra and analysis. His attempts to
stop his son studying the parallel axiom fortunately failed! Farkas
Bolyai wrote to his son Detest it as lewd intercourse, it can deprive
you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness
of your life. When Farkas Bolyai despaired of the parallel postulate,
he wrote poetry, music and drama. Article by: J J
O'Connor and E F Robertson Biography in Dictionary
of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990). Books: Articles: J Fráter,
The library of Farkas Bolyai (Hungarian), Magyar Tud. Akad. Mat. Fiz.
Oszt. Közl. 19 (1970), G B Halsted, Biography. Bolyai Farkas [Wolfgang Bolyai], Amer. Math. Monthly 3 (1896), 1-5. K-R Biermann, Ein Brief von Wolfgang Bolyai (German), Math. Nachr. 32 (1966), 341-346. |
