Évariste Galois.

French mathematician. Èvariste Galois (gah-lwah) was the son of Nicolas-Gabriel Galois, a friendly and witty liberal thinker who headed a school that accommodated about sixty boarders. Elected mayor of Bourg-la-Reine during the Hundred Days after Napoleon’s escape from Elba, the elder Galois retained office under the second Restoration. Galois’s mother, Adelaïde-Marie Demante, was from a long line of jurists and had received a more traditional education. She had a headstrong and eccentric personality. Having taken control of her son’s early education, she attempted to implant in him, along with the elements of classical culture, strict religious principles as well as respect for a stoic morality. Influenced by his father’s imagination and liberalism, the eccentricity of his mother, and the affection of his elder sister Nathalie-Théodore, Galois seems to have had a childhood that was both happy and studious.