Quintic equations are polynomial equations with one variable, customarily denoted by x, which is never raised to a power greater than the fifth. Symbolically, such an equation can be written as follows: ax5 + bx4 + cx3 + dxdx2 + ex + f = 0. The problem...

By the nineteenth century, mathematicians had long been interested in solving equations called polynomials. However, Paolo Ruffini (1765-1822) and Niels Abel (1802-1829) proved that some polynomials could not be solved by previously known methods....

In mathematics, a quintic equation is a polynomial equation of degree five. It is of the...

. . THE romantic figure at the heart of Mario Livio's fascinating book about mathematical equations and symmetry is a brilliant Frenchman, Evariste Galois, who died in 1832 at the age of only 20. Galois's work was the culmination of an...

THE roots of algebra, as John Derbyshire tells us, go back to the ancient world: the Babylonians left cuneiform tablets showing simple algebraic problems. Its actual birth is usually credited to Diophantus of Alexandria, who wrote "Arithmetica" in Greek during the third century....