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Which French mathematician died in a duel at twenty?

  • Evariste Galois
  • Niels Abel
  • Sophie Germain

The answer is Evariste Galois. Galois, in 1832 — group theory in a night.

Évariste Galois

Évariste Galois was a French mathematician and political activist. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a problem that had been open for 350 years. His work laid the foundations for Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra.

Wikipedia · Évariste Galois