The present paper is a contribution to a “meta-biography” of the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829). Abel was born in 1802, when Norway formed part of a union with Denmark, and he was educated at the still very young University in Christiania (now Oslo) during a time when Norway entered into a union with Sweden after a brief spell of independence. He became internationally renowned through his mathematical research that was published mainly in Berlin, and he died before the Norwegian state (or any other state, for that matter) could provide him with a permanent income. Thus, the mathematician Abel lived a life fully worthy of a romantic, neglected and defiant hero or martyr. Yet, whereas all of these points were material to Abel, they became symbolical to the next generations of Norwegian mathematicians, who could use Abel’s legacy – both the real intellectual one and the more metaphorical self-promoting one – for positioning themselves in on-going debates.

This meta-biographical approach sheds new light on the debates about mathematics in Norway during this period and should thus be read mainly as an analysis of the professionalization and internationalization of that discipline in this particular peripheral setting. The present case focuses on the very first biographical accounts of Abel written by his teachers and friends. Not only were these people who had known Abel personally during his very short life, but they also knew how to construct and use Abel’s legacy for the time after his death. Thus, when the popular biographies written by Abel’s teachers – B. M. Holmboe (1795–1850) and Christopher Hansteen (1784–1873) – are analysed, these provide insights into the professional discussions concerning the roles of mathematics in Norway in the mid-nineteenth century. As teachers of mathematics, Holmboe’s and Hansteen’s controversy also included the proper means and ways of teaching mathematics.