# How is it shown that quintic equations can be solved by radicals and ultraradicals?

See this article from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_radical

George Jerrard showed that some quintic equations can be solved using radicals and Bring radicals, which had been introduced by Erland Bring. They can be used to obtain closed-form solutions of quintic equations.

How is it possible to prove that? Does anyone know an article that gives the proof? I know some basic Galois theory, but I'm not expert at it. Also, can we define ultraradicals for higher powers and obtain closed-form solutions of higher degree equations? If yes, what part of mathematics deal with these problems?

Also, Charles Hermite has a paper where he proves that quintic equations can be solved using elliptic integrals. See here.

## 1 Answer

The basic theorem is that a polynomial is solvable by radicals iff its Galois group is solvable. The solvability of the Galois group is the proof you ask for. In this case, the Galois group of the Bring radical is not solvable. So if there were a way to "invert" the Bring radical--i.e. find its roots the same way you find a square root or cube root--then you could solve many more quintics.