Abel, Niels Henrik Abel, is a famous Norwegian mathematician. Abel was a pioneer in the development of several branches of modern mathematics. “Abel was one of the innovators in the field of elliptic functions, discoverer of Abelian functions and one of the leaders in the use of rigor in mathematics.” (www.shu.edu) Many famous mathematicians (some of whom I will mention) have been greatly influenced by his works. One mathematician once said that he “left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years.” (www.shu.edu) Although he had great accomplishments in mathematics, his life was a very hard one and is even said to be “tragic.” (www.shu.edu)
Niels Henrik Abel was born on August 5, 1802. He was on of seven children born to a poor pastor in the small village of Finnöy in Norway, a country so poor at the time that peasants would leave their country in groups just to escape starvation. Abel’s mathematical talent was recognized in 1817, when he entered the Cathedral School in Christiania, by his teacher named Bernt Michael Holmbe. Holmbes introduced him to the classics in mathematical literature and proposed original problems for him to solve. He studied the works of the 17th-century Engli

Abel returned to Norway, heavily in debt. He subsisted by tutoring, by receiving a small grant from the university, and (1828) by accepting a substitute-teaching position. His ill health and poverty did not hurt his production; he wrote many papers during this period. Among them were his work on equation theory, and elliptic functions, and another was on the theory of the Abelian equations with Abelian groups. He developed the theory of elliptic functions in completion with Karl Gustav Jacobi. By this time Abel’s fame in the mathematics world was well spread. Strong efforts were made to secure a suitable position for him by a group from the French Academy. He traveled to Paris and Berlin in search for that position. In 1828 (Christmas) he traveled by sled to visit his fiancé. On that sled ride he became seriously ill. Crelle had succeeded in finding him a position, and wrote him on April 8, 1828 telling him the good news. But it was too late, Abel had already died. (www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk)

English mathematicians and physicist Isaac Newton and the contemporary mathematicians Leonard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, and Carl Friedrich Gauss and learned to detect gaps in their mathematical reasoning. (R. Tolimieri and M. An)

Abel, as I mentioned, made great contributions to the world of mathematics.