The Bolyai Museum - Târgu Mureș
The Bolyai Museum, which was founded in 1937, was originally set up in one of the chambers at the Library of the Calvinist College in Targu-Mures, showcasing the surviving personal items belonging to the two ingenious mathematicians. In 1955, the memorial museum and the library of the college were arranged in the right wing of the Teleki Library building, and a few years later, the Bolyai memorial room was moved to the ground floor, where it can be found today. In addition to their personal items, such as Bolyai Farkas' chess set, János Bolyai's geometric compases set, and a unique stove made by Bolyai Farkas, you can also see some pieces of their personal furniture, or the pseudosphere wooden model, representing the non-Euclidean geometry.
Farkas Bolyai
Farkas Bolyai was born in Bólya, Sibiu County on 9th February 1775, to a lower nobility family. He started his studies at Calvinist College of Aiud (Nagyenyed). Due to his advancement in mathematics and languages he was considered a child prodigy.
Farkas Bolyai
Farkas Bolyai was born in Bólya, Sibiu County on 9th February 1775, to a lower nobility family. He started his studies at Calvinist College of Aiud (Nagyenyed). Due to his advancement in mathematics and languages he was considered a child prodigy.
Later on, he studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen. Here Farkas Bolyai became good friends with the famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. After his studies he settles in Cluj-Napoca, marries and his son János Bolyai is born on 5th December 1802. The Calvinist College of Târgu-Mureș offers Farkas a position, which he has taken starting with 4th May 1804. He teaches at the College for 47 years, not only mathematics, but physics, chemistry and astronomy as well. (Today this school bears his name.)
Though he was a polymath, his primary field of work was mathematics. His first papers dealt with topics concerning the parallel lines. On 9th March 1832 the Hungarian Scientific Society makes him a corresponding member. Farkas’ main work is called Tentamen (Târgu-Mureș, 1832), which comprises his theories on several basic mathematical subjects, his results being ahead of his time. This work was also intended as a textbook for his students. Farkas Bolyai was an excellent teacher, who also was concerned with the reformation of education and a more rational organisation of the syllabus, in his studies also suggesting the solutions for this issue.
Farkas Bolyai showed a great interest in practical matters as well: he devised a highly efficient stove; the model rapidly became popular throughout Transylvania. He was the author of the first Hungarian book on forestry. Among his manuscripts, we can find works on optics, plans for bridges and pharmaceutical recipes too.
He had an artistic streak in him as well: he painted, played the violin, wrote treatises on the theory of music, what’s more, when he was young, he tried his hand at acting too. He wrote poems and plays (Öt szomorújáték-Five tragedies, Sibiu, 1817, A párizsi per – The Paris trial, Marosvásárhely, 1818.) and translated French, English and German literature.
He died in Târgu-Mureș (Marosvásárhely), on 20th November 1856. He rests in the Protestant cemetery.
János Bolyai
János Bolyai was one of the greatest personalities in the history of mathematics. He broke new grounds in science: the creation of Non-Euclidian geometry revolutionized geometry and the theory of physics and replaced Newtonian theories about the world.
He was born in Kolozsvár, on 15 December, 1802. He was brought up in Marosvásárhely and attended the Protestant College. He showed a great interest in mathematics as a child. However, due to the limited financial possibilities of the family he couldn’t attend the University of Göttingen; instead, he went to the Military Academy of Vienna. The military career was a burden to him. He entered the army engineering corps and was sent to Temesvár, Arad and then to Olmütz; then, at the age of 30, he retired and moved home to Marosvásárhely. He lived a retiring life here and on his estate in Domáld, which the family had inherited from Farkas Bolyai’s mother.
From a young age, János Bolyai was interested by the unsolved problems of mathematics, most of all the 9th axiom of Euclid, the Postulate of the Parallels. With hard work, he developed Non-Euclidian Geometry as early as in 1823. He wrote down his findings in his work entitled Scientia Spatii, which was only published in 1832, as an appendix to his father’s book Tentamen. One of the greatest achievements of the age, it still didn’t bring any change in Bolyai’s life. His name remained unknown for the world of science.
The Teleki-Bolyai library keeps about 13,000 pages of his manuscripts, most of which are his philosophical work Tan (Teachings). His writer intended it as a comprehensive scientific work. Following the units on natural sciences and arts, the chapter entitled Üdvtan (Escatology) was meant to teach mankind the way to universal bliss.
He died on 27 January, 1860. In 1911, his earthly remains were moved next to his father’s.
(source: telekiteka.ro)
(source: telekiteka.ro)
Address: Teleki Library, Bolyai str. no. 17.
Visiting program: Tuesday - Friday: 10 - 17:30
