Niels Henrik Abel was one of the worlds leading mathematicans in the first half of the 19th century. He is probably the most wellknown Norwegian mathematican ever. Both in his own country and internasjonal. He is not only known because of his brilliant work and insight. His hard but short life and his personal qualities have awoken peoples interest.

Abel was born at 5. August in 1802 in Finnøy in Norway, but he grew up in a place called Gjerstad. When he was 13 years old he was sent to the capital to attend the cathdral school. During his time there his father died and left the family with money problems.

Abel was an indifferent student. His mathematic teacher was a brutal and thoughtless man. One day he hit a student so badly that he died a few days later. This was a turning-point for Abel. The teacher was suspended and the B.M. Holmboe replaced him. He was an inspireing and caring teacher. Holmboe saw that he had special skills in mathematic and he helped and supported Abel as long as he lived. Abel borrowed books and studied on his own. He went above the usual level and soon he attacked problems that were unsolved at that time, such as fifth degree equations. The 16 year old boy studied works from Euler, Poisson, Gauss and Lagrange. He went deep into the mathematics but he did not do very well in the other subjects.

Abel believed he had found a formula to solve the fifth degree equation and he sent it to a professor in Kopenhagen. They could not find anything wrong about it. Abel discovered the mistake himself later on and he found out that such a formula do not exist. The professor praised his work but he recomanded him to study more interesting problems such as elliptic functions.

The autumn 1821, as Abel was 19 years old, he started his studies at the university in Oslo. He did not have much money, but with help from the proffesors at the university he could establish and continue his mathematical studies.

His first journey abroad was to Kopenhagen in 1823, where he got to know Danish mathematicans and met his future fiancèe. After this trip he seemed to blossom out. From the letters he wrote to Holmboe, it is obvious that he had allready found the key to the theory of the elliptic functions.

Abel was also interested in other mathematical problems, for instance integral arithmetic, mecanics and Fermats hypothesis. Some of his work was published, but because of his bad economy, the publications had to be kept as small as possible, and they did not get as much attention as they deserved.

The summer 1825 he finaly got a scholarship, and he went on a long jorney abroad. It lasted one and a half year. Perhaps did the strain from this long trip contribute to the disease that later lead to his death. Abel was absorbed in the problems of the divergent progressions. During his trip he met a lot people who were going to affect his work. For instance Crelle who was to become his friend and who did a lot of attempts to get Abel employed at the university in Berlin. In between Holmboe had been engaged as a professor at the university in Oslo. This meant that Abel could not get a regular job in Norway that inclouded mathmatic studies. His running race with an other mathematican, Jacobi, led to great progress in the theory of elliptic functions.

Niels Henrik Abel died April 6th in 1829 of tuberculosis. Two days later Crelle wrote him a letter where he told him he was emploied as a professor in Berlin.