Johann, in the failure of his father to obtain any response from Gauss, in answer to a letter in which he asked the great mathematician to make of his son “an apostle of truth in a far land,” entered the Engineering School at Vienna. He writes from Temesvar, where he was appointed sub-lieutenant September, 1823:—
“Temesvar, November 3rd, 1823.
“Dear Good Father,
“I have so overwhelmingly much to write about my discovery that I know no other way of checking myself than taking a quarter of a sheet only to write on. I want an answer to my four-sheet letter.
“I am unbroken in my determination to publish a work on Parallels, as soon as I have put my material in order and have the means.
“At present I have not made any discovery, but the way I have followed almost certainly promises me the attainment of my object if any possibility of it exists.
“I have not got my object yet, but I have produced such stupendous things that I was overwhelmed myself, and it would be an eternal shame if they were lost. When you see them you will find that it is so. Now I can only say that I have made a new world out of nothing. Everything that I have sent you before is a house of cards in comparison with a tower. I am convinced that it will be no less to my honour than if I had already discovered it.”
The discovery of which Johann here speaks was published as an appendix to Wolfgang Bolyai’s Tentamen.
Sending the book to Gauss, Wolfgang writes, after an interruption of eighteen years in his correspondence:—
“My son is first lieutenant of Engineers and will soon be captain. He is a fine youth, a good violin player, a skilful fencer, and brave, but has had many duels, and is wild even for a soldier. Yet he is distinguished—light in darkness and darkness in light. He is an impassioned mathematician with extraordinary capacities.... He will think more of your judgment on his work than that of all Europe.”