The Extraordinary Vision of Alexander Grothendieck - Human, All Too Human

It’s tempting to think of Alexander Grothendieck, arguably the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, as the Syd Barrett of mathematics: a genius who saw too much, too fast – who reached for the secret too soon. You may have read at The Guardian or The New York Times that Grothendieck passed away last winter, having lived his last couple of decades as a recluse somewhere in the French Pyrenees. I’d like to tell you something of Grothendieck and describe in nontechnical… Continue reading