RePoSS #11: The Mathematics of Niels Henrik Abel: Continuation ...

2.2. “Study the masters” 25
Figure 2.4: CARL FERDINAND DEGEN (1766–1825)
in Copenhagen being older and larger than the one in Christiania, the faculty of phi-
losophy had only two professorships in mathematics (and one in astronomy) which
in 1823 were held by DEGEN and E. G. F. THUNE (1785–1829).
Together, DEGEN and THUNE had meant a change of generations in the mathe-
matical milieu at the university when they were appointed 1813 and 1815. 25 DEGEN,
being the more creative of the two, had gained international reputation with a publi-
cation of tables for the solution of Pellian equations in 1817. 26 To the mathematicians
in Christiania — as to the general Norwegian public — Copenhagen was still to some
extent considered the intellectual and cultural capital of the country even after the
separation in 1814. Thus, by virtue of its former colonial power, the mathematical
talents of DEGEN, and the circulation and status of the publications of the Royal Dan-
ish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Copenhagen was the obvious choice for a first
foreign trip for a young and promising Norwegian mathematician.
The maturing mathematician. ABEL’S first two works in the sciences estimated im-
portant enough to receive wider circulation by Norwegian scholars, the alleged solu-
tion of the quintic and his computations concerning the magnetic field of the Earth,
were both caught in the review system of the time. In the incipient scientific milieu in
25 THUNE was originally appointed as professor of astronomy 1815 before he transferred to the professorship
of mathematics 1819.
26 (C. F. Degen, 1817)