Alexander grothendieck mathematician biography
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‘He was in mystic delirium’: was this hermit mathematician a forgotten genius whose ideas could transform AI – or a lonely madman?
One day in September 2014, in a hamlet in the French Pyrenean foothills, Jean-Claude, a landscape gardener in his late 50s, was surprised to see his neighbour at the gate. He hadn’t spoken to the 86-year-old in nearly 15 years after a dispute over a climbing rose that Jean-Claude had wanted to prune. The old man lived in total seclusion, tending to his garden in the djellaba he always wore, writing by night, heeding no one. Now, the long-bearded seeker looked troubled.
“Would you do me a favour?” he asked Jean-Claude.
“If I can.”
“Could you buy me a revolver?”
Jean-Claude refused. Then, after watching the hermit – who was deaf and nearly blind – totter erratically about his garden, he telephoned the man’s children. Even they hadn’t spoken to their father in close to 25 years. When they arrived in the village of Lasserre, the recluse repeated his request for a revolver, so he could shoot himself. There was barely room to move in his dilapidated house. The corridors were lined with shelves heaving with flasks of mouldering liquids. Overgrown plants spilled out of pots everywhere. Thousands of pages of arcane scrawling were lined up in canvas b
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“What Grothendieck would do is work until late in the night writing up his thoughts, and then throw them downstairs to Dieudonné at 5 a.m., who would then clarify and fill out what Grothendieck had put together until 8 a.m. or so,” McLarty told me. Vakil describes the experience of reading the texts that came from that time as “scriptural.” He said, “Every single sentence is obvious, based on what came before. In that way, it’s simple.”
Many people who knew Grothendieck during his time at I.H.E.S. speak of his kindness, his openness to any kind of question, his gentle humor. He was often barefoot. He fasted once a week in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Mazur recalled that Grothendieck had met a family at the local train station with nowhere to stay, and he invited them to live in the basement apartment of his home. He had a machine installed that helped make taramosalata—a fish-roe spread—so that they could sell prepared food at the market.
Grothendieck spoke of problem-solving as akin to opening a hard nut. You could open it with sharp tools and a hammer, but that was not his way. He said that it was better to put the nut in liquid, to let it soak, even to walk away from it, until eventually it opened. He also spoke of “the rising sea.” One way to think of this:
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Songster, Germany
Saint-Girons, Author