Faith, Conviction and Courage.

I am reading a book on Maths, and in it I found a superb passage:

"I remain completely confident that the labor I have expended on the science presented here and which has  demanded a significant part of my life as well as the most strenuous application of my powers, will not be lost. It is true that I am aware that the form which I have given the science is imperfect and must be imperfect. But I know and feel obliged to state (though I run the risk of seeming arrogant) that even if this work should again remain unused for another seventeen years or even longer, without entering into the actual development of science, still that time will come when it will be brought forth from the dust of oblivion and when ideas now dormant will bring forth fruit. I know that if I also fail to gather around me (as I have until now desired in vain) a circle of scholars, whom I could fructify with these ideas, and whom I could stimulate to develop and enrich them further, yet there will come a time when these ideas, perhaps in a new form, will rise anew and will enter into a living communication with contemporary developments. For truth is eternal and divine."

Stirring words.

Hermann Gunther Grassman was a high-school teacher, who lived between the years 1810 and 1877. He had studied theology and philology, and then  studied maths on his own.

He published his breakthrough in a book,  "The Theory of Linear Extensions...". That work laid the ground of what eighty years later became known as the theory of vector spaces. He defined much of its basics, and was instrumenta in the  invention of the modern concept of "algebra".

But his work did not find recognition. The only review of it was written by Grassman himself, no one else noticed him. He tried his best to promote the book, but Mobius, who read the book, described it as unreadable, though he helped and praised Grassman. Cauchy, to whom he had sent his work for it to be forwarded to Jean Claude Saint-Venant, who had developed similar ideas, failed to do it. Instead, six years later Cauchy published a paper which could have been derived from Grassman's work. Grassman complained, and a three man committee of enquiry was set up. Since one of them was Cauchy himself, we can well know what the finding was. Hamilton praised Grassman's book, but promoted his own method over its.

Eight years later, Grassman reprinted the book again, changing its language to make it more readable. The quoted passage is taken from the preface he wrote to that edition. But still he went unnoticed.

Disillusioned, Grassman turned to philology, and translated Rig Veda into German: this work was supported by a lengthy commentary, and was a massive 3000 page volume. He found recognition for this achievement: The University of Tubingen awarded him a honorary doctorate.

Seventeen years later, in the year after Grassman's death, William Kingdon Clifford published a paper, "Application of Grassman's Extensive Algebra". These Clifford algebras were applied in 20th century theoretical physics. The modern theory of spinors is derived from them.

All this, I read in this book by John Derbyshire.

His words, "There will come a time when these ideas, perhaps in a new form, will rise anew and will enter into a living communication with contemporary developments. For truth is eternal and divine.", proved prophetic. His conviction in the value of his ideas, and the faith that truth, which is eternal and divine, will come alive and illuminate the contemporary life of a later age, are moving in face of the discouragement and defeat that he encountered.

For every one of us, these words should ring a message of inspirational tone: we might be neglected and consigned to a dusty corner, but that should not deter us from pursuing our passion- truth, eternal and divine, is certain to  rise anew when the times call for it.