Talented Mathematicians Who Died In A Tragic Way

The mathematicians listed below were men of great talent but suffered from ill fates. Some died in poverty or even hunger. Some passed away at a young age, and others were victims of wars.

Évariste Galois

Évariste Galois

Galois is the youngest mathematician to be featured on this list. He passed away at the age of 21. Except for the rumor that he died in a duet, nothing else was revealed about his death. Many people believe the duet was fueled by his involvement in the Républicain movement; others think he had got himself into a love triangle. Before the fateful defeat, he left these last words:

"Ne pleure pas, Alfred! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans!"

Niels Abel

Niels Abel

Abel lived in poverty, and his work went unknown during the course of his lifetime. He was in Paris looking for an opportunity to make his findings known, but he could not afford necessary means. He also had pneumonia, which became worse when he made a trip to see his fiancée on Christmas. He never had the chance to know that his friend had gotten him a job as a mathematics professor or see his works recognized.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Ramanujan was a self-taught Indian mathematician. He worked on analytical number theory and some other areas of mathematics. He lived in poverty and was unable to pay for formal education. Illness followed him for most of his life. When his life started to get a bit brighter, which was the time he worked with G.H. Hardy, he died because of malnutrition and a parasitic liver infection.

Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Turing was one of those who built the foundation of computer science. At that time, homosexual relations were against the law, and he had to go to the police because his sexual partner blackmailed him. Eventually, fierce anti-gay persecution and the fear of Soviet espionage drove him to kill himself in 1954 by consuming an apple with cyanide.

Dmitri Egorov

Dimitri Fedoroviç Egorov

Egorov worked in differential geometry, integral equations, and analysis. He was the leader of both the Moscow Mathematical Society and the Mathematics at Moscow Sate University. He went public opposing the anti-religious persecution, which costed him his position at the IMM. However, he remained a respected figure in the MMS, but this did not last for long. Within a year, he was arrested. The mathematician later joined a hunger strike in jail and died in the hospital.

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel

Gödel is known for his work in completeness theorems as well as his paranoia. In the last few years of his life, he thought that someone poisoned his food and ate only the things his wife had tasted. When his wife fell ill, the mathematician refused food completely. He later died of starvation with only 65 pounds left in his body.

Georg Cantor

Georg Cantor

Cantor’s most significant work was on arithmetics of (infinite) ordinal and cardinal numbers, which are of great importance for mathematics and philosophy. However, other mathematicians oppose his idea and imposed harsh criticism on him. Some of his most well-known opposers are Poincaré, Kronecker, and Wittgenstein. Cantor was Kronecker’s student, and he was the one who insulted Cantor the most, which gave the great mathematician several episodes of depression. He did get recognition for his work, but Cantor spent the last years of his life underfed, depressed, and later died of a heart attack.

Archimedes

Archimedes

Archimedes was considered the greatest mathematician of Antiquity and also a famed philosopher. He contributed significantly to engineering, mathematics, philosophy, and science. He was also the one that made the word Eureka well-known even until this day.

In a siege of Syracuse, it was ordered that Archimedes was to be left unharmed. However, a misunderstanding led to him being killed by a soldier. Many people believe that his killer thought his compass was some kind of a weapon, so he took him down.

Issac Newton

Issac Newton

Newton lived to old age, but his health was in a poor state for most of his life. When he was young, his family was poor, and he fell ill often. In the last years of his life, Newton indulged in philosophical and religious debates. When he died, people found out that he had a large amount of mercury in his body, which explained why he was so eccentric and weak.

Alexander Grothendieck

Alexander Grothendieck

Grothendieck was part Russian and part German. His father died fighting the Nazis, and he later left his work because of the relation between research mathematics and defense science. He was awarded the Fields medal in 1966, but in 1988, he refused to receive the Craford prize. In the same year, he retired completely. In 1991, Grothendieck retreated to a secluded place, and since then, no one has heard or seen him again.

Frank Ramsey

Frank Ramsey

Ramsey was a man of many talents. He was a renowned mathematician, an economist, and a philosopher. However, due to his liver issues, he was unable to concentrate on working for more than a couple of hours a day. Despite his poor health, Ramsey was recognized for his contribution in both mathematics and philosophy. In 1930, he was hospitalized because of an attack of jaundice. He later died in surgery.

Stanisław Saks

Stanisław Saks

Saks was one of the mathematicians that developed the foundation of the theory of integration and measure. His favorite spot was the Scottish Café. He dedicated his life to not only mathematics but also to train the younger generation to follow his footsteps. He was involved in the Polish army, which later came to Lvov, where the Scottish Café was. However, in 1941, the city was invaded. Saks ran away from Lvov to Warsaw. He might continue his work with the Polish underground there before he was arrested and put to death by the Gestapo.

Dénes Kőnig

Dénes Kőnig

When the Nazi seized Hungary, there were several cruel acts against the Semitic people. Kőnig sympathized for the suffering of his colleagues and tried his best to help. Things got worse when the Hungarian National Socialist Party gained the leading power, which drove Kőnig to kill himself a few days after the coup d'état happened.