The 19th Century saw an unprecedented increase in the breadth and complexity of mathematical

concepts. Both France and Germany were caught up in the age of revolution which swept Europe in the
late 18th Century, but the two countries treated mathematics quite differently.

Throughout the 19th century mathematics became increasingly abstract. Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–
1855) epitomizes this trend. He did revolutionary work on functions of complex variables, in geometry,
and on the convergence of series, leaving aside his many contributions to science. He also gave the first
satisfactory proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra and of the quadratic reciprocity law.

Behavior of lines with a common perpendicular in each of the three types of geometry

This century saw the development of the two forms of non-Euclidean geometry, where the parallel
postulate of Euclidean geometry no longer holds. The Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich
Lobachevsky and his rival, the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, independently defined and
studied hyperbolic geometry, where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds. In this geometry the sum of
angles in a triangle add up to less than 180°. Elliptic geometry was developed later in the 19 th century by
the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann; here no parallel can be found and the angles in a
triangle add up to more than 180°. Riemann also developed Riemannian geometry, which unifies and
vastly generalizes the three types of geometry, and he defined the concept of a manifold, which
generalizes the ideas of curves and surfaces.

The 19th century saw the beginning of a great deal of abstract algebra. Hermann Grassmann in Germany
gave a first version of vector spaces, William Rowan Hamilton in Ireland developed noncommutative
algebra. The British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now
called Boolean algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1. Boolean algebra is the starting point of
mathematical logic and has important applications in electrical engineering and computer science.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernhard Riemann, and Karl Weierstrass reformulated the calculus in a more
rigorous fashion.

Also, for the first time, the limits of mathematics were explored. Niels Henrik Abel, a Norwegian, and
Évariste Galois, a Frenchman, proved that there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial
equations of degree greater than four (Abel–Ruffini theorem). Other 19 th-century mathematicians
utilized this in their proofs that straightedge and compass alone are not sufficient to trisect an arbitrary
angle, to construct the side of a cube twice the volume of a given cube, nor to construct a square equal
in area to a given circle. Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve all of these problems since the
time of the ancient Greeks. On the other hand, the limitation of three dimensions in geometry was
surpassed in the 19th century through considerations of parameter space and hypercomplex numbers.

Abel and Galois’s investigations into the solutions of various polynomial equations laid the groundwork
for further developments of group theory, and the associated fields of abstract algebra. In the 20 th
century physicists and other scientists have seen group theory as the ideal way to study symmetry.
In the later 19th century, Georg Cantor established the first foundations of set theory, which enabled the
rigorous treatment of the notion of infinity and has become the common language of nearly all
mathematics. Cantor’s set theory, and the rise of mathematical logic in the hands of Peano, L.E.J.
Brouwer, David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell, and A.N. Whitehead, initiated a long running debate on the
foundations of mathematics.

The 19th century saw the founding of a number of national mathematical societies:

After the French Revolution, Napoleon emphasized the practical usefulness of mathematics and his
reforms and military ambitions gave French mathematics a big boost, as exemplified by “the three L’s”,
Lagrange, Laplace and Legendre (see the section on 18 th Century Mathematics), Fourier and Galois.

Joseph Fourier’s study, at the beginning of the 19 th Century, of infinite sums in which the terms are
trigonometric functions were another important advance in mathematical analysis. Periodic functions
that can be expressed as the sum of an infinite series of sines and cosines are known today as Fourier
Series, and they are still powerful tools in pure and applied mathematics. Fourier (following Leibniz,
Euler, Lagrange and others) also contributed towards defining exactly what is meant by a function,
although the definition that is found in texts today – defining it in terms of a correspondence between
elements of the domain and the range – is usually attributed to the 19 th Century German mathematician
Peter Dirichlet.

In 1806, Jean-Robert Argand published his paper on how complex numbers (of the form a + bi, where i is
√-1) could be represented on geometric diagrams and manipulated using trigonometry and vectors.
Even though the Dane Caspar Wessel had produced a very similar paper at the end of the 18 th Century,
and even though it was Gauss who popularized the practice, they are still known today as Argand
Diagrams.

The Frenchman Évariste Galois proved in the late 1820s that there is no general algebraic method for
solving polynomial equations of any degree greater than four, going further than the Norwegian Niels
Henrik Abel who had, just a few years earlier, shown the impossibility of solving quintic equations, and
breaching an impasse which had existed for centuries. Galois‘ work also laid the groundwork for further
developments such as the beginnings of the field of abstract algebra, including areas like algebraic
geometry, group theory, rings, fields, modules, vector spaces and non-commutative algebra.
Germany, on the other hand, under the influence of the great educationalist Wilhelm von Humboldt,
took a rather different approach, supporting pure mathematics for its own sake, detached from the
demands of the state and military. It was in this environment that the young German prodigy Carl
Friedrich Gauss, sometimes called the “Prince of Mathematics”, received his education at the prestigious
University of Göttingen. Some of Gauss’ ideas were a hundred years ahead of their time, and touched on
many different parts of the mathematical world, including geometry, number theory, calculus, algebra
and probability. He is widely regarded as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all times, along
with Archimedes and Newton.

Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic geometry

Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic geometry

Later in life, Gauss also claimed to have investigated a kind of non-Euclidean geometry using curved
space but, unwilling to court controversy, he decided not to pursue or publish any of these avant-garde
ideas. This left the field open for János Bolyai and Nikolai Lobachevsky (respectively, a Hungarian and a
Russian) who both independently explored the potential of hyperbolic geometry and curved spaces.

The German Bernhard Riemann worked on a different kind of non-Euclidean geometry called elliptic
geometry, as well as on a generalized theory of all the different types of geometry. Riemann, however,
soon took this even further, breaking away completely from all the limitations of 2 and 3 dimensional
geometry, whether flat or curved, and began to think in higher dimensions. His exploration of the zeta
function in multi-dimensional complex numbers revealed an unexpected link with the distribution of
prime numbers, and his famous Riemann Hypothesis, still unproven after 150 years, remains one of the
world’s great unsolved mathematical mysteries and the testing ground for new generations of
mathematicians.

British mathematics also saw something of a resurgence in the early and mid-19 th century. Although the
roots of the computer go back to the geared calculators of Pascal and Leibniz in the 17 th Century, it was
Charles Babbage in 19th Century England who designed a machine that could automatically perform
computations based on a program of instructions stored on cards or tape. His large “difference engine”
of 1823 was able to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions, and was the true forerunner of
the modern electronic computer. Although never actually built in his lifetime, a machine was built
almost 200 years later to his specifications and worked perfectly. He also designed a much more
sophisticated machine he called the “analytic engine“, complete with punched cards, printer and
computational abilities commensurate with modern computers.
Another 19th Century Englishman, George Peacock, is usually credited with the invention of symbolic
algebra, and the extension of the scope of algebra beyond the ordinary systems of numbers. This
recognition of the possible existence of non-arithmetical algebras was an important stepping stone
toward future developments in abstract algebra.

In the mid-19th Century, the British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra (now called Boolean
algebra or Boolean logic), in which the only operators were AND, OR and NOT, and which could be
applied to the solution of logical problems and mathematical functions. He also described a kind of
binary system which used just two objects, “on” and “off” (or “true” and “false”, 0 and 1, etc), in which,
famously, 1 + 1 = 1. Boolean algebra was the starting point of modern mathematical logic and ultimately
led to the development of computer science.