The Abel-Ruffini theorem (also known as Abel's impossibility theorem) states that there is no general solution in radicals to polynomial equations of degree five or higher.

The content of this theorem is frequently misunderstood. It does not assert that higher-degree polynomial equations are unsolvable. In fact, if the polynomial has real or complex coefficients, and we allow complex solutions, then every polynomial equation has solutions; this is the fundamental theorem of algebra. Although these solutions cannot always be computed exactly with radicals, they can be computed to any desired degree of accuracy using numerical methods such as the Newton-Raphson method or Laguerre method, and in this way they are no different from solutions to polynomial equations of the second, third, or fourth degrees.

The theorem only concerns the form that such a solution must take. The content of the theorem is that the solution of a higher-degree equation cannot in all cases be expressed in terms of the polynomial coefficients with a finite number of operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and root extraction. Some polynomials of arbitrary degree, of which the simplest nontrivial example is the monomial equation \( ax^n = b \), are always solvable with a radical.