"Wolfgang Bolyai de Bolya... after studying at Jena... went to Göttingen, where he became intimate with K. F. Gauss, then nineteen years old. Gauss used to say that Bolyai was the only man who fully understood his views on the metaphysics of mathematics. Bolyai became professor at the Reformed College of Maros-Vásárhely, where for forty-seven years he had for his pupils most of the later professors of Transylvania. ...he was truly original in his private life as well as in his mode of thinking. ...No monument, said he, should stand over his grave, only an apple-tree, in memory of the three apples; the two of Eve and Paris, which made hell out of earth, and that of I. Newton, which elevated the earth again into the circle of heavenly bodies. His son, Johann Bolyai... once accepted the challenge of thirteen officers on condition that after each duel he might play a piece on his violin, and he vanquished them all."