Book Review. Oláh-Gál Róbert’s Bolyai-Sommázat

Abstract

UNESCO has declared 2023 the Bolyai Memorial Year, to mark the 200th anniversary on 3 November 2023 of the famous letter from János Bolyai to his father in Timisoara, in which he told him that he had created "a new and different world out of nothing". According to Róbert Oláh-Gál: "The Bolyai-Sommázat is not a traditional biography of Bolyai or a volume presenting the work of the Bolyai, but a selection of writings which I believe have contributed to sharpening and clarifying the image of the Bolyai and correcting some biographical errors".The author has contributed to the research on the Bolyai through thirty years of archival research. A very important part of the book is the Bolyai chronology, in which we find out in great detail, even broken down by the day, when and where the Bolyai were, what happened to them over a period of almost a hundred years, between 1768 and 1860.