Sophus Lie journeyed to Germany in the fall of 1869. He was on a Norwegian scholarship that would take him to Berlin, Paris, and Rome, though probably no one imagined him as following in the footsteps of Niels Henrik Abel. Lie was nearly 27 years old at the outset of his journey, an age Abel never reached. Later in Lie’s life, he took a deep interest in promoting the legacy of his great predecessor, even though mathematically they had little in common.