Status Updates From Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Marty...

"for the moment he is the mathematician who knows how mathematics must be done. Cauchy is tremendously catholic and bigoted, a very strange thing for a mathematician. Otherwise he is the only one working on pure mathematics." Mathematically, if not personally, Abel found in Cauchy a kindred spirit- one who valued mathematics for its pursuit of rigorous truth first, and practical applications only a distant second.

The spectre of poverty and professional insecurity haunted young Abel, wrote Boeck, and his only refuge was in his work: 'By clearing up some theorem he was working on he could, for a few moments, forget everything else; he was perfectly happy'