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Mathematics Great Alexander Grothendieck Dies At 86
An anonymous reader writes Alexander Grothendieck, one of the great eccentric geniuses of 20th century mathematics, has died in France at the age of 86. Grothendieck was the leading mind behind algebraic geometry. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966. He reached the very pinnacle of his profession before abandoning the discipline, taking up anti-war activism, retreating into the life of a recluse and refusing to share his research. He died on Thursday in a hospital in Saint-Girons in southwestern France.
The line between genius and insanity is a thin one.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The snippet above ("before abandoning the discipline, taking up anti-war activism") sounds as if he had switched from math to politics in 1970. Truth is, he was an anti-war activist all life long, i.e. against France's Algeria war, and he even gave lectures in Vietnam during wartime (1967). Some biographic texts about him are available at http://www.scharlau-online.de/... (AFAICT in german).
According to the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A..., he did later return to academia until 1988: "He retired from scientific life around 1970, after having discovered the partly military funding of IHÉS. He returned to academia a few years later as a professor at the University of Montpellier, where he stayed until his retirement in 1988. "
In it, he described his encounters with a deity and announced that a "New Age" would commence on 14 October 1996.
Crap! He promised he wouldn't tell anyone.
Oh well, I guess the cat is out of the bag.
How are people liking the New Age? Any suggestions for improvement?
Well the best way to put it is the man gets 2 3 letter acronyms reserved for him among all mathematicians.
Éléments de géométrie algébrique (EGA) and Séminaire de géométrie algébrique (SGA).
Wikipedia has a nice list of other things with his name:
Ax-Grothendieck theorem
Birkhoff–Grothendieck theorem
Brieskorn–Grothendieck resolution
Grothendieck category
Grothendieck's connectedness theorem
Grothendieck connection
Grothendieck construction
Grothendieck duality
Grothendieck existence theorem
Grothendieck fibration
Grothendieck's Galois theory
Grothendieck group
Grothendieck inequality or Grothendieck constant
Grothendieck–Katz p-curvature conjecture
Grothendieck's monodromy theorem
Grothendieck's mysterious functor
Grothendieck–Ogg–Shafarevich formula
Grothendieck period conjecture
Grothendieck prime
Grothendieck's relative point of view
Grothendieck–Riemann–Roch theorem
Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique
Grothendieck's six operators
Grothendieck space
Grothendieck spectral sequence
Grothendieck–Teichmüller theory
Grothendieck trace formula
Grothendieck topology
Grothendieck universe
Tarski–Grothendieck set theory
[It's not insanity... ] Yes it is.... same as Howard Hughes
I dunno... long-term reading of this blog might result in the impression that life is a disheartening, unjust affair. It's full of rights violations by police and government agencies, feckless and obstructive politicians, corrupt and predatory corporations, and so on.
To read online news results, everything is lurid and emotional. For example, the nurse in Main [who was in contact with ebola] who didn't agree to a quarrantine was in a "standoff" with authorities, the Philae lander is "racing against time" (whatever *that* means), there's a tiger loose in Disneyland, and we need to be afraid of everything so that the government can justify their purchases and policies.
Is it that much of a stretch to believe that people will view the world through this skewed perspective?
Given what we know about human psychology - for example, that people will believe what they're told by default (viz. religion) - it makes perfectly rational sense that a small cadre would lose all hope in humanity and seek to avoid it.
I don't think these people can be legitimately called insane. They're not hurting anyone, they're not hurting themselves, and they're living their own lives.
What criteria would you apply to these people to designate them as "insane", and what behaviour would you change about them to fix it? (And how do measure such a change so that you can tell when they're no longer insane?)
Recipients immediately start talking out their butt about subjects they have no expertise in. See also: Linus Pauling, Shockley, Chomsky (yes I know, no nobels for some, but you get the point).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'