Evariste Galois, a French mathematician, is eighteen…

Evariste Galois, a French mathematician, is eighteen years-old in 1829 when he publishes his first paper on continued fractions, which, although competent, holds no suggestion of genius.

Nevertheless, it is at around the same time that he begins making fundamental discoveries in the theory of polynomial equations, and he submits two papers on this topic to the Academy of Sciences.

Augustin Louis Cauchy referees these papers, who, despite many claims to the contrary, appears to have recognized the importance of Galois' work, but refuses to accept them for publication for reasons that still remain unclear, though it is speculated that he preferred Galois to combine the two manuscripts into a single, more comprehensive paper.

In any case, Galois is able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals, thereby solving a long-standing problem.