BÓLYAI, János
* 15. 12. 1802, Cluj, Romania
† 27. 1. 1860, Targu Mures, Romania
Mathematician
Farkas, B’s father had already been a known mathematician. After attending a Calvinistic college in Targu Mures, B entered a military academy in Vienna. With the military rank of lieutenant he was first transferred to Temesvár in 1823 and later in 1826 to Arad. Among other things a gifted young man took an interest in mathematic. In this year he made a draft of his ‘absolute geometry’ with which he solved the questions of parallel axioms, a subject of research from the time of Euclid onwards. As a first lieutenant he was transferred to Lwow in 1827. Prior to transfer he left his father an explanation of the afore mentioned problem, composed in Latin, who, in turn, has had this merely 29 pages embracing work published. Karl Friedrich Gauss to whom he sent a sample to Germany, complimented the work but had, however, designated it as somehow unfashionable. In the following year the text saw the light as an appendix to his father’s work under a rather lengthy title Appendix Scientiam spatii absolute veram exhibens: a vertate aut falsitate Axiomatis XI Euclidei… (Absolutely verified science of space beyond truth or falsification of eleventh Euclid’s axiom…). The paper evoked little attention and was not generally acknowledged. In the meantime B was promoted to the rank of captain and transferred from Lwow to Olomouc. Due to cholera contraction and suffering from malaria he asked for a premature retirement. Despite harsh conditions accompanying him upon his return to Transylvania he managed to compose numerous mathematical and philosophical works which had, nevertheless, never been published. B had left behind around 15.000 manuscripts which have, up until today, not received a scholarly discussion.
