Székely Nép, 2010 (46. évfolyam, 59-60. szám)

2010-03-01 / 59. szám

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REMEMBERING

JANOS BOLYAI

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ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO PASSED AWAY THE "COPERNICUS OF GEOMETRY".

His epoch-making scientific genius was not appreciated during his lifetime. This is what was written in the Funeral Register of the Hungarian Reformed Church of Marosvasarhely, (Tirgu- Mures),at the death of Janos Bolyai on January 27th, 1960: "A mathematical genius, the best among the bests. What a pity that his talent was buried unused." This brief note reminds us that his contemporaries could not understand and recognize his true scientific and plain human greatness. The great French mathematician, Guillaume Jules Houel, confirms this saying a few years after Bolyai's death by writing: "I doubt that Transylvania could have produced two more important persons, than the two Bolyais. In their lack of love for the sciences, at least their love for their own nation should encourage the Hungarians to be aware of Bolyais importance...I am very sad that Hungary is not appreciating enough its own scientific achievements."

However, at the 100th Anniversary of Boyai’s death in Kolozsvár, (Cluj), this is what Baron Eötvös Lorand, the president of the Hungarian Scientific Academy said: "Let us admit that we too are striving for that faraway eternal glory of Bolyai that is achieved only by those who are striving to discover universal scientific truths. If we Hungarians want to be good scientists and god Hungarians at the same time, we have to lift up the flag of science so high that it might be seen and be appreciated well beyond the borders of our country. This is our ideal, and this is

what became a reality once in the achievement of Bolyai, and only once in its full measure.

Another president of the Academy, the world-famous brain scientist, Janos Szentagothai, said 75 years later: "The genius of the Hungarian people, on the territory of scientific knowledge, reached its highest point in the person of Janos Bolyai." Why? "For he knew and he even described once, that ’this new world view, created out of nothing, will effect our perception of objects, and will influence all sciences in which the concept of space, its structure and interpretation plays a roll'." Janos Bolyai, who passed away 150 years ago, - following in the footsteps of his equally famous mathematician and polymath father, Farkas Bolyai , - is probably the greatest stature in the Hungarian scientific world, called the “Copernicus of Geometry”. Transcending the two thousand year old geometry of Euclid, he created the completely new, and “absolute true” science of space, bringing a revolutionary new aspect into he world of mathematics. His main work, the Appendix of 1831 was placed by he UNESCO on the list of the most memorable achievements of the world, alongside the achievement of the also Transylvanian Hungarian Reformed scientist, Sándor Csorna de Koros, the founder of the language of Tibet.

Bolyai - and his Russian contemporary Lobachevski , working at the same time - is the founder of the hyperbolic geometry on which the modem gravitational theory and the relativist theory of Einstein is built. For this reason Janos Bolyai is listed among the world greatest scientists. Besides establishing the science of space, he also figured out on the basis of the theory of functions the squares and logarithm of complex numbers, way ahead of his contemporaries. His theoretical work paved the way for the physical, logical, linguistic, symbologic and information theory mathematics. He was working throughout his life on his encyclopedia that would organize and encompass all human knowledge. The crown of this never published encyclopedia would have been the Salvation Theory, which would have explained the ethical philosophy, leading to the enlightenment and happiness utopia of mankind. Following a bad marriage, Bolyai spent the second half of his life as a solitary, sickly recluse, dying completely forlorn three years after his father's death. Since he was ahead of his contemporaries by several decades, his achievements were never appreciated during his lifetime. László Nemeth wrote that the speed of his spiritual and physical reactions were extraordinary. This became clear already in his early childhood not only in his mathematical genius, but also in the fact that he was an outstanding fencer, a legendary duellist and also a wonder violinist, comparable to Paganini.

His whole life and striving was characterized by “his high respect and devotion for honest mathematics end moral truth . Behind his discovery that liberated the human mind from the slavery of the thousand years old uniplanar understanding of the world, woven together with these to principles of honest mathematics and moral truth, lift this solitary mathematician to the level of human heroes” - writes our last polymath, László Vekerdi. We wonder, how many people will remember Bolyai in the miserably confused and tragically whirling Hungary of today.

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