“Euclid could inscribe regular polygons of 3, 4, 5, 15 sides or numbers obtained by doubling these. Those of 7, 9, 11, 13, 14 sides no man ever could or ever will geometrically inscribe. When on the evening of March 30th, 1796, Gauss showed to his student friend, the Hungarian, Wolfgang Bolyai, the formula which gave the geometric inscription of the regular polygon of 17 sides, it was with the remark that this alone could be his epitaph, if it were not a pity to omit so much that went with it. Was it this break beyond Euclid's enchanted bounds that started these two young men in that re-sifting of the very foundations of geometry which led to those new conceptions of the whole subject just now, after another hundred years, beginning to be taught in America's foremost universities?”
FO