“In Leibnitz's day... equations of the 2d, 3d, and 4th degrees were reduced to pure equations, but the reduction of equations of higher degrees than the 4th remained an unsolved problem, on which mathematicians spent much labor, until Niels Henrik Abel... a Norwegian mathematician of great ability and acuteness, demonstrated (1824) that the quintic equation and a fortiori the general equation of any order higher than five, is incapable of solution by radicals. Cf. Abel, Démonstration de l'impossibilité de la résolution algébrique des équations générates qui passent le quatriéme degré”