Abstract

The lives of mathematical prodigies who passed away very early after groundbreaking work invoke a fascination for later generations: The early death of Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) from ill health after a sled trip to visit his fiancé for Christmas; the obscure circumstances of Evariste Galois ’ (1811–1832) duel; the deaths of consumption of Gotthold Eisenstein (1823–1852) (who sometimes lectured his few students from his bedside) and of Gustav Roch (1839–1866) in Venice; the drowning of the topologist Pavel Samuilovich Urysohn (1898–1924) on vacation; the burial of Raymond Paley (1907–1933) in an avalanche at Deception Pass in the Rocky Mountains; as well as the fatal imprisonment of Gerhard Gentzen (1909–1945) in Prague1 — these are tales most scholars of logic and mathematics have heard in their student days. Jacques Herbrand, a young prodigy admitted to the École Normale Supérieure as the best student of the year1925, when he was17, died only six years later in a mountaineering accident in La Bérarde (Isère) in France. He left a legacy in logic and mathematics that is outstanding.

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