Editors' Note: Continuing his report of the Oslo Congress of 1936, Dunnington describes here the Abel monument in the Royal Park in Oslo, something that should be on any list of sights for mathematicians visiting the Norwegian capital. The sculptor, Gustav Vigeland, is best known for his many works in the gardens at Frogner Park in Oslo, but that collection contains no sculptures of mathematicians. For other versions of the statue of Abel and for maquettes produced in preparation for the piece in the Royal Park, one should visit Vigeland's house and studio, also in Oslo.

In 1908 Norway honored the memory of Niels Henrik Abel by erecting a monument of him in the park in front of the Royal Castle in Oslo. Gustav Vigeland, the leading modern Norwegian sculptor, created this monument. The late Felix Klein in his Vorlesungen über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert (vol. 1, p. 108) compares Abel and Mozart, speaking in this connection of the beautiful monument to Mozart in Vienna. But of the Abel monument he writes:

“I cannot avoid referring on this occasion to the entirely different sort of monument which has been erected to Abel in Oslo and which must severely disappoint everyone who knows his nature. On a lofty steep block of granite a youthful athlete of the Byronic type is striding upward, over two atrocious victims.