He was the greatest algebraic geometer in the19th century, but he retaken the college entrance examination five times and failed every time because of his poor math test. He barely graduated from college, and every time he failed in the exam, it was for math subjects. After graduating from college, he couldn't get into any graduate students because the subject he didn't do well in was mathematics. Mathematics is the love of his life, but the math exam is a nightmare of his life. However, this does not change his greatness: he first put forward the "* * * yoke matrix" in textbooks, and he solved the "general solution of quintic equation" for more than 1000 years. He is the first person in the world to prove the "transcendence" of natural logarithm. His life has proved that "a person who can't pass the exam can still have a winning life", and what's more amazing is that failing the exam has become a blessing in his life.
Hermite's math was not that bad, but he felt that their local math teaching atmosphere was lifeless at that time, and math textbooks were like a pile of waste paper. Those so-called good math students are second-rate minds, because they only know how to copy mechanically! So he has been a problem student since he was a child, and he always likes to argue with the teacher in class, especially some basic problems. He especially hates exams; Because once he failed in the exam, the teacher hit him on the foot with a wooden stick, which is one of the reasons why he regretted the math exam; He wrote in a later article: "The purpose of education is to use the brain, not the feet. What's the use of kicking? Can kicking make people smart? "
While boycotting the exam, Hermite spent a lot of time reading the original works of mathematics masters, such as Newton and Gauss, because in his view, only there can we find "the beauty of mathematics is to go back to the basic point of argument, and only in this way can we drink the source of mathematics excitement." When he was old, he recalled the frivolity of his youth and wrote: "Traditional mathematics education requires students to learn step by step and train them to apply mathematics to engineering or business. So it didn't stimulate students' creativity. But mathematics has its own beauty of abstract logic. For example, solving quadratic equations, the existence of roots itself is a kind of beauty. The value of mathematics is not only for the application in life, but also should not be reduced to a tool for engineering and commercial applications. The breakthrough of mathematics still needs to constantly break through the existing pattern. "