Alexander Grothendieck - A Country Known Only by Name

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Alexander Grothendieck:

A Country Known Only by


Name
Pierre Cartier

To the memory of Monique Cartier (1932–2007)

This article originally appeared in Inference: International Review of Science, (inference-review.com), volume 1,
issue 1, October 15, 2014), in both French and English. It was translated from French by the editors of Inference and
is reprinted here with their permission.
An earlier version and translation of this Cartier essay also appeared under the title “A Country of which Nothing
is Known but the Name: Grothendieck and ‘Motives’,” in Leila Schneps, ed., Alexandre Grothendieck: A Mathematical
Portrait (Somerville, MA: International Press, 2014), 269–88.
Alexander Grothendieck died on November 19, 2014. The Notices is planning a memorial article for a future issue.

T
here is no need to introduce Alexander deepening of the concept of a geometric point.1 Such
Grothendieck to mathematicians: he is research may seem trifling, but the metaphysi-
one of the great scientists of the twenti- cal stakes are considerable; the philosophical
eth century. His personality should not problems it engenders are still far from solved.
be confused with his reputation among In its ultimate form, this research, Grothendieck’s
gossips, that of a man on the margin of society, proudest, revolved around the concept of a motive,
who undertook the deliberate destruction of his or pattern, viewed as a beacon illuminating all the
work, or at any rate the conscious destruction of incarnations of a given object through their various
his own scientific school, even though it had been ephemeral cloaks. But this concept also represents
enthusiastically accepted and developed by first- the point at which his incomplete work opened
rank colleagues and disciples. to a void. Grothendieck’s idiosyncrasy prompted
Grothendieck’s journey? A childhood devas- him fully to accept this flaw. Most scientists are
tated by Nazism and its crimes, a father who was somewhat keener to erase their footprints from
absent in his early years and then disappeared in the sand, silence their fantasies and dreams, and
the storm, a mother who kept him in her orbit and devote themselves to the statue within, as François
long disturbed his relationships with other women. Jacob puts it.
He compensated for this with a frantic investment From the depths of the isolation he has imposed
in mathematical abstraction until psychosis, kept upon himself since 1990, Grothendieck has sent
at bay through this very involvement, caught up us a vast, introspective work: Récoltes et Semailles
with him and swallowed him in morbid anguish. (Crops and Seeds).2 If its existence has given rise
Grothendieck is difficult to categorize. Like
1
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and On its fortieth anniversary, the IHÉS published my “La
many other mathematicians, he was obsessed with folle journée” (The Crazy Day), analyzing the concept
the notion of space. But his originality lay in of a geometric point by appeal to Grothendieck’s ideas.
See Pierre Cartier, “La folle journée, de Grothendieck à
*NOTE: The following author information has been Connes et Kontsevich. Évolution des notions d’espace et
updated online and differs from the print version of de symétrie,” Publications Mathématiques de l’IHÉS 88
this issue of the Notices: Pierre E. Cartier is an emeritus (1998): 23–42.
research professor at the Centre National de la Recherche 2
Scientifique, a visitor at the Institut des Hautes Études Sci- Alexander Grothendieck was not only my colleague,
entifiques, and an associate member of the Paris-Diderot he was a very close friend. He sent me only one part of
University. His email address is cartier@ihes.fr. Récoltes et Semailles, the part that he thought I would be
able to understand. For the missing part, I consulted the
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/noti1235 copy at the IHÉS library.

April 2015 Notices of the AMS 373


among some to an unwholesome curiosity, I will popular, for the most part, with Protestants. It
nonetheless stick to offering as rational and honest housed a private high school, the Collège Cévenol,
an appraisal of the work as possible before permit- which until 1939 was largely a diploma mill for
ting the book itself to elucidate the remarkable dim but wealthy Protestant youth. During the
enterprise of a no less exceptional man. war, however, under Pastor Trocmé’s energetic
influence, the Collège Cévenol became a center of
Biographical Elements spiritual resistance to Nazism, one dedicated to
A Family of Outcasts the rescue of Jewish children. Grothendieck was
There were three personalities: father, mother, a boarder at the Foyer Suisse and a student at the
and son, each in a unique way remarkable; and Collège. He left so strong an impression that even
a phantom: an older half sister whom he did not in the late 1950s, I was able to coax accounts of
know very well, on the mother’s side, who died him from witnesses.
recently in the United States. To the best of my Formative Years
knowledge, the father’s name was Schapiro, sug- His childhood came to an end. He graduated from
gesting Hassidic roots. Breaking family tradition, the Collège Cévenol and became a student at
Schapiro was drawn to Russia’s revolutionary Montpellier in 1945. Then began the period of his
Jewish circles, and at the age of seventeen took scientific training.
part in the failed 1905 revolution against the Czar. His first explicitly mathematical episode
He paid for this effort with more than ten years occurred when he was an undergraduate. He
in prison and was only released during the 1917 described himself as very unhappy with the educa-
revolution. This marked the beginning of an end- tion given at the time. His professor told him that
less period of revolutionary wandering and the a certain Lebesgue had already solved all (!) the
first of a long series of incarcerations. At last, after problems in mathematics, but that it would be too
Franco’s victory in Spain, he was reunited with his difficult to teach. So alone, with almost no guid-
wife Hanka and their son Alexander, refugees in ance, Grothendieck reconstructed a very general
France. By then, his son attests, he was a broken version of the Lebesgue integral. In Récoltes et
man. He drifted aimlessly for a while; then, like so Semailles, he describes in detail the genesis of this
many other antifascist refugees, he was interned first mathematical work, achieved in isolation; he
in ear1y 1939 in the Vernet Camp, until the Vichy honestly believed that he was the only mathemati-
authorities handed him to the Nazis, and he disap- cian in the world.5
peared into Auschwitz.3 When he arrived in Paris in 1948, mathematics
Hanka Grothendieck—Alexander took his moth- degree in hand, his public period began. His pro-
er’s surname—was a northern German. During the fessor from Montpellier had recommended him
1920s, she was active in various far-left groups and to his own former professor, Élie Cartan, unaware
tried her hand at writing. She already had a daugh- that Cartan was now much diminished, and that
ter when she met Schapiro. Alexander was born in he had a son, Henri Cartan, who was as famous
Berlin in March 1928.4 She immigrated to France as his father and would henceforth dominate the
when Hitler came to power and eked out a meager Parisian—thus French—mathematical scene.
existence in German émigré circles. Hanka and her There was little love lost between Henri Cartan,
son were interned in Mende in 1939, and would the great Protestant university professor, and the
only find respite after the debacle of June 1940. young, self-taught rebel. André Weil thus sug-
Alexander (he wasvenol long insistent upon gested sending Grothendieck to Nancy; there, Jean
this spelling) was abandoned by his parents when Delsarte, one of the Bourbaki group’s mentors, had
they left Germany. He remained hidden on a farm skillfully promoted himself into a position as dean
in northern Germany until 1938 (he was then ten of faculty, making Bourbaki’s infiltration possible.6
years old), raised by a teacher of the Freinet school Jean Dieudonné and Laurent Schwartz knew how
who believed in a return to Nature. He passed the to discipline Grothendieck just enough to pre-
years from 1942 to 1944 in Chambon-sur-Lignon, vent him from overextending himself, and how
a pleasant resort town (in normal times) that was to restrain his immoderate taste for extreme
generality. They also knew how to give him
3
My colleague Szpiro confirmed this; his father was in-
5
terned at Vernet for analogous reasons. These memories I had a taste for mathematics, but I didn’t know that one
came to light sixty years later. could make a career of it. My grandfather had graduated
4 from the École des Arts et Métiers, and my uncle graduated
The 1945 Götterdämmerung in Berlin destroyed all
from the École Centrale; my family’s ambition was to see
public records. Grothendieck thus experienced endless
me enter the École Polytechnique!
administrative problems. Until the beginning of the 1980s,
6
he traveled with a Nansen passport from the United Na- The association of Nicolas Bourbaki’s collaborators was
tions; these were documents issued to stateless people, created in 1935. Its founding members were Henri Car-
albeit parsimoniously. After 1980, believing that he could tan, Claude Chevalley, Jean Coulomb, Jean Delsarte, Jean
no longer be drafted into the French army, he became a Dieudonné, Charles Ehresmann, René de Possel, Szolem
naturalized French citizen. Mandelbrojt, and André Weil.

374 Notices of the AMS Volume 62, Number 4


problems like Lebesgue’s integration. Quickly, the intended to fuse arithmetic, algebraic geometry,
disciple overtook his masters: alone, unaided, and and topology. A builder of cathedrals, as he put it
isolating himself deliberately, he dominated the in his own allegory, he distributed the work to his
domain of Functional Analysis. teammates. Every day, he sent interminable and
At the same time, a liaison with his landlady in illegible mathematical feuilletons to Dieudonné,
Nancy led to the birth of a son, Serge. When a few who, sitting at his worktable from five to eight each
years later Grothendieck sought to care for Serge morning, transformed the scribbles into an impos-
himself, he embarked upon a custody lawsuit that ing collection of volumes co-signed by Dieudonné
had little chance of succeeding. But this was only and Grothendieck and then published in the IHÉS’
the beginning of his chaotic family life: in all, he Publications Mathématiques. Dieudonné abjured
had five children by three mothers, and would be all personal ambition and consecrated himself
as absent a father to them as his own father was to this service with the same self-abnegation he
to him. had demonstrated under Bourbaki. He nonethe-
The Golden Age at the IHÉS less only stayed at the IHÉS for a few years; upon
His mathematical work in Nancy had established the creation of the University of Nice, he became
his renown, and he might well have sailed along its first Dean of Sciences. But that did not end
on that momentum. But he described himself well his collaboration with Grothendieck, and he even
when he said that he was a builder of houses in found the energy to organize the International
which he was not meant to live. He embarked upon Congress of Mathematicians in Nice, in 1970.8
the classical career of a researcher, was quickly The IHÉS team’s success was immediate and
recruited to the CNRS (Centre National de la Re- resounding. As early as 1962, Serre declared
cherche Scientifique, National Center for Scientific that algebraic geometry and scheme theory were
Research), promoted, and then spent a few years identical.9 Direct and indirect publications on
abroad after writing his dissertation. When he re- the subject grew to the thousands of pages.
turned from São Paulo, he closed the chapter on After Grothendieck’s retreat from mathematics,
Functional Analysis. That was the beginning of his Pierre Deligne and Luc Illusie labored to finish
master period, 1958 to 1970, which coincided with publishing the Algebraic Geometry Seminars
the Bourbaki group’s prime. The springboard that series, for which Grothendieck was ungrateful.
allowed him to do this phenomenal work was given Grothendieck’s school closed in on itself; the gen-
to him by Léon Motchane, a brilliant business- erosity of spirit associated with it disappeared; a
man who had thrown himself into the creation of breath was stifled; but then, the same is true for
the IHÉS (Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Bourbaki’s enterprise.10
Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies) in Bures-
The Break from High Society
sur-Yvette. Motchane offered Dieudonné, who
Grothendieck’s scientific renown reached its apo-
had just completed his theory of formal groups,
gee in 1966. He was to receive the crowning honor,
the future institute’s first chair in mathematics.
Dieudonné accepted on the condition that he hire the Fields Medal, at the International Congress of
Grothendieck as well. The duo then recruited Jean- Mathematicians in Moscow.11 While the Soviet au-
Pierre Serre, who with his keen sense of the unity of thorities were scant inclined to give him a visa (his
mathematics, high scientific culture, quickness of father had become an “enemy of the people” after
mind, and technical prowess, would keep them on the 1917 revolution), they still believed they might
their toes. Serre acted as an intermediary between leverage mathematicians in the highly virulent
Weil and Grothendieck when they no longer wished Cold War. (The small demonstration organized by
to communicate directly, and contributed greatly Smale in Moscow nonetheless clearly showed them
to the clarification of the Weil conjectures. Serre how difficult mathematicians were to manipulate.)
was the perfect beater of mathematical pheasants Grothendieck did not show up.
(I was going to say matchmaker), scaring the quarry It was thus, in the context of this event, as
straight into Grothendieck’s nets, and in nets as well as the opening of a social rift (Berkeley’s
strong as those, the quarry barely struggled. fever, in 1965, led to May 1968 in France), that
Grothendieck was then moved to create one of 8
the most prestigious mathematics seminars the This consummated the rupture between Dieudonné and
world has ever seen. Surrounded by young talent, Grothendieck. The mutual incomprehension between
the head of the congress, who believed in science for the
he threw himself with a passion into mathematical
sake of science, and the libertarian militant, who used the
discovery, in sessions lasting from ten to twelve congress to propagate his revolutionary ideas, became
hours! 7 He formulated a formidable program complete.
9
7 Grothendieck’s creation.
In Récoltes et Semailles, Grothendieck cites and names 10
his twelve apostles. The central character is Pierre Deligne, Common destiny of institutions and civilizations.
11
who combines in this narrative the features of John, the We like to compare this to the Nobel Prize (which doesn’t
apostle whom Jesus loved, and Judas. Ah, the weight of exist in mathematics), but it is limited to three or four
symbols. laureates every four years.

April 2015 Notices of the AMS 375


Grothendieck’s fault line ruptured, or rather that to the regions of Lozère and Larzac, and seen from
his deepest wound was reopened. This wound was the outside, Grothendieck’s house was the very
that of his Russian Jewish father, remembered in embodiment of a phalanstery, he one of the gurus.
a country where anti-Semitism was resurgent; it Following a few incidents, real or exaggerated, the
was coupled with a “Nobel syndrome,” particularly local police raided Grothendieck’s house. The only
since the Fields Medal crowned an unfinished crime that they could pin on him was his hosting
agenda and his suspicion that he would never of a Japanese Buddhist monk, a former mathemat-
reach the goal of his scientific ambitions.12 In par- ics student at the Tata Institute in Bombay and
allel with this, the ambient social rift revealed to an entirely inoffensive character, but one whose
him his own contradictions. He, who saw himself residence permit in France had expired. The un-
as an outlaw and an anarchist, suddenly discovered expected result was a summons, six months later,
that he was in fact a mandarin of the international to the Magistrate’s Court of Montpellier, by which
scientific world, one who wielded authority over time the Japanese monk had, of course, long since
ideas and people. In a period when all authority disappeared to the Antipodes. And what should
was contested, he was ill at ease with this double have been a ten-minute expedited procedure
personality. His temporary response was to found became a major event. Grothendieck appeared at
a tiny group that expressed itself in a newsletter the Bourbaki Seminar in Paris to alert some of his
called Survivre (Survival) and later Survivre et vivre colleagues: Laurent Schwartz, Alain Lascoux and
(Survival and Life). This movement resembled one me. By the day of the trial, the judge had received
of those ecological-doom sects that sprung up in two hundred letters in favor of the accused, and a
the 1970s, the danger (real at the time) of nuclear chartered airplane disgorged a medley of support-
war merging with the obsession with pollution and ers wearing Dean’s robes (with Dieudonné at their
overpopulation. He probably believed that social head), the ecclesiastical fringe of the champagne
arguments, too, could be made using techniques of socialist set, legal heavyweights. Grothendieck
mathematical proof. In the end, he managed only acted as his own lawyer, preferring the risk of los-
to antagonize his audience. ing the trial to accepting concessions on form. He
There followed a few years of wandering: he gave a magnificent speech for the defense. Alas,
resigned from the IHÉS on a relatively minor pre- as Grothendieck had predicted, the craven judge
text13 in September 1970, traveled abroad, took a sentenced him to a six-month suspended sentence.
temporary position at the Collège de France, and The sentence was upheld on appeal, but by then
finally a position as a professor at the University the media excitement had died away.
of Montpellier of his youth, a place for which he Grothendieck retired in 1988, and has lived
had only modest esteem.14 since in an interior exile in a little village in Ariège
The Interior Exile (a department in the Midi-Pyrénées region of south-
During his years in Montpellier, one event in par- western France). He seems to have broken off all
ticular was a milestone: his trial. Grothendieck had family ties. It is not insignificant that he lives so
always welcomed marginal sorts into his home. In close to the Vernet Camp, which is sadly infamous,
the 1970s, many hippie groups became attached but above all associated with his childhood. He has
neither a telephone nor a known postal address,
12
The high point of a career that one imagines can’t be
and only a select few know the exact location of
surpassed. his retirement, having promised not to divulge
13 it. He lives alone, perceived by his neighbors as a
The discovery that the IHÉS received, on the recommen-
dation of Michel Debré (then the French prime minister), a
“slightly eccentric retired mathematics professor.”
modest stipend from the DRET (Direction de la recherche He has translated his spirituality into Buddhist
et des études techniques, or the Directorate of Research terms, and kept from his orthodox Jewish ances-
and Technical Studies, part of the Defense Ministry, an tors a respect for dietary taboos: he practices the
organization financing military research). The IHÉS’ most extreme form of vegetarianism, and seems as
financing was for a long time quite opaque, but military a result to have compromised his health.
funding never played more than a modest role. It isn’t
totally absurd, however, to imagine that there might have The Birth of His Mathematical Work
been a global plan eventually to draft scientists in a new Presenting Grothendieck’s scientific work in a
world war (this time against the USSR), and that the IHÉS few pages to a lay audience is a challenge. To
might have been part of that network. Only Motchane do so, I will make use of the analysis offered by
could have enlightened us about this point. Dieudonné, long Grothendieck’s closest associate,
14
He was an affiliated professor (a position reserved for in his introduction to the Festschrift produced on
foreigners) there from 1970 to 1972. At the very moment the occasion of Grothendieck’s sixtieth birthday.15
when he could have received tenure, he announced unam-
biguously that he would use his chair as a vehicle for his
15
eco-anarchist ideas. This resulted in a curious three-way Jean Dieudonné, “De l’analyse fonctionelle aux fonde-
competition among Grothendieck, Jacques Tits, and me, ments de la géométrie algébrique,” in Pierre Cartier et al.,
very unusual for the Collège de France, which ended with eds., The Grothendieck Festschrift, (Basel: Birkhaeuser,
Tits’s nomination to the Chair of Group Theory. 1990), 1–14.

376 Notices of the AMS Volume 62, Number 4


Functional Analysis towards theoretical physics, a discipline guilty of
Georg Cantor’s Set Theory allowed its twentieth- the destruction of Hiroshima.
century heirs to create Functional Analysis. This Homological Algebra
is an extension of the classical Differential and Grothendieck then began a second mathematical
Integral Calculus (created by Leibniz and Newton), career at the age of twenty-seven. It was 1955,
in which one considers not merely a particular the golden age of French mathematics, when
function (such as the exponential function or a mathematicians in Bourbaki’s orbit, and under
trigonometric function), but the operations and the leadership of Henri Cartan, Laurent Schwartz
transformations that can be performed on all and Jean-Pierre Serre, attacked the most difficult
functions of a certain type. The new theory of problems of geometry, group theory, and topology.
integration, created at the beginning of the twen- New tools appeared: sheaf theory and homological
tieth century by Émile Borel and above all by Henri algebra (invented by Jean Leray in the first case,
Lebesgue, and the invention of normed spaces and by Henri Cartan and Samuel Eilenberg in the
by Stefan Banach, Maurice Fréchet, and Norbert second: their treatise Homological Algebra was
Wiener, yielded new tools for construction and published in 1956). These were admirable in their
proof in mathematics. Functional Analysis is a generality and flexibility.
seductive theory in its generality, simplicity, and The apples of the Garden of the Hesperides
harmony, and it can resolve difficult problems were the famous conjectures stated by André Weil
elegantly. However, it often makes use of non- in 1949. These seemed to represent a combinato-
rial problem of daunting generality (counting the
constructive methods (the Hahn-Banach theorem,
number of solutions for equations with variables
Baire’s theorem and its consequences), which,
in a Galois field), even though many significant
when used to prove the existence of a mathemati-
special cases were already known.
cal object, cannot always provide an effective
Grothendieck’s first foray into this new do-
method for its construction. (Are there two irratio-
main came as a thunderclap. It was known by
nal numbers a and b such that ab is rational? The _
the nickname “Tohoku” because it appeared in
obvious proof indicates that there are, but fails _
the Japanese T ohoku Mathematical Journal in
to identify the numbers). It is unsurprising that 1957 under the modest title “Sur quelques points
a beginner, delighted by the theory, responded d’algèbre homologique” (Some Aspects of Homo-
enthusiastically to what he learned about Func- logical Algebra).16 Homological algebra, intended
tional Analysis from his somewhat old-fashioned to be a general tool that reached beyond all the
professors in Montpellier. special cases, was already a vast synthesis of
Upon his arrival in the Parisian mathematical known methods and results. But sheaves do not
world in 1948, at the age of twenty, Grothendieck enter into this framework. Jean Leray constructed
had already written a voluminous manuscript in sheaves and their homology ad hoc, imitating the
which he reconstructed a very general version of geometric methods of Élie Cartan (Henri Cartan’s
the Lebesgue integral. Once established in a favor- father). In the autumn of 1950 Eilenberg, who was
able milieu in Nancy, where Jean Dieudonné, Jean spending a year in Paris, began with Cartan to give
Delsarte, Roger Godement and Laurent Schwartz an axiomatic characterization of sheaf homology,
(all active members of the Bourbaki group) were yet the construction retained its ad hoc character.
striving to go beyond Banach’s work on Functional When Serre introduced sheaves into algebraic
Analysis, he revolutionized the subject, and even geometry in 1953, the seemingly pathological na-
in a sense annihilated it. In his thesis, written ture of the Zariski topology forced him into some
in 1953 and published in 1955, he created from very indirect constructions. Grothendieck’s genius
scratch a theory of tensor products for Banach consisted in solving the problem from above, a
spaces and their generalizations, and invented the method he would often use. Analyzing the success
concept of a nuclear space in order to explain Lau- of homological algebras in the context of modules,
rent Schwartz’s important kernel theorem about he unearthed the notion of an abelian category
functional operators. Russian mathematicians (simultaneously invented by David Buchsbaum),
influenced by Israel Gelfand would make essential and above all the condition he called AB5*. This
use of nuclear spaces, and it would become one condition guaranteed the existence of so-called
injective objects. The sheaves satisfying condition
of the keys to applying techniques from probabil-
AB5*, the method of injective resolutions that is
ity theory to problems in Mathematical Physics
fundamental for modules, extends to sheaves in
(statistical mechanics, “constructive” quantum
general without the need for any artifice. Not only
field theory). Grothendieck abandoned this after
does it lend a sound basis to the construction of
writing a dense and profound article on metric
inequalities, one that fueled the research of an 16
Alexander Grothendieck, “Sur quelques points d’algèbre
entire school (Gilles Pisier and his colleagues) for homologique, II” (Some Aspects of Homological Algebra),
_
forty years. He cared little about the consequences Tohoku Mathematical Journal 9, no. 3 (1957): 119–21,
of his ideas, and was indifferent, even hostile, doi:10.2748/tmj/1178244774.

April 2015 Notices of the AMS 377


the Ext and Tor functors over to sheaves. Every- six hundred-page reflection on multi-dimensional
thing is natural again. categories. Combinatorics, geometry, and homo-
Algebraic Geometry and Arithmetic Geometry logical algebra come together in an imposing proj-
After this initiation (1955–1958), Grothendieck ect. After more than fifteen years of the combined
announced his research program: to create arith- efforts of many, three (probably nearly equivalent)
metic geometry via a (new) reformulation of definitions have been proposed for multidimen-
algebraic geometry, seeking maximal generality
sional categories (broadly defined). 19 They are
by appropriating the new tools created for use in
not only important for pure mathematics since
topology and already tested by Cartan, Eilenberg,
and Serre. He dared attack the synthesis that none a theory of such constructions would have many
of the actors at the time (Claude Chevalley, Serge potential applications in theoretical computer sci-
Lang, Masyoshi Nagata, Jean-Pierre Serre, me) ence, statistical physics, etc. The second, Esquisse
had dared, throwing himself headlong into the d’un programme (Sketch of a Program),20 was a
work with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. text written in 1984 for inclusion in the application
Grothendieck’s undertaking thrived thanks to for a position with the CNRS. In it, Grothendieck
unexpected synergies: the immense capacity for sketches (the word is exact) the construction of a
synthesis and for work of Dieudonné, promoted
tower (or a game of Lego) describing deformations
to the rank of scribe; Serre’s rigorous, rationalist
of algebraic curves. Finally, La longue marche à
and well-informed spirit; the practical know-how in
geometry and algebra of Oscar Zariski’s students; travers la théorie de Galois (Long March Through
the youthful freshness of his great disciple Pierre Galois Theory),21 written in 1981, gives partial
Deligne—all acted as counterweights to Grothen- indications about some of the constructions sug-
dieck’s adventurous, visionary, and wildly ambi- gested in the Esquisse.
tious spirit. The new IHÉS mobilized a constellation Those texts were all passed around hand-
of young international talent. Organized around to-hand, with the exception of the Esquisse,
the key notion of a scheme, Grothendieck’s theory which was finally published at the insistence of a
ended up annexing every part of geometry, even
group of devotees. Curiously, the true heirs of
the newest parts such as the study of algebraic
Grothendieck’s work are essentially members
groups.17 Using a gigantic apparatus—Grothen-
dieck topologies (étale, crystalline…), descent, of a Russian mathematical school (Yuri Manin,
derived categories, the six operations, charac- Vladimir Drinfeld, Alexander Goncharov, Maxim
teristic classes, monodromy groups, and so on— Kontsevitch, to cite just a few), who have had little
Grothendieck arrived halfway to the final goal, the if any direct contact with Grothendieck. Nonethe-
Weil conjectures. In 1974, Deligne completed the less, they inherited and knew how to make use of
proof, but Grothendieck had, by 1970, and after methods from mathematical physics, a domain he
twelve years of undisputed scientific reign over disregarded and abhorred.
the IHÉS, lost his own organizing center and had
let things fall apart. Until his official retirement in 19
The challenge is this: when we want to formulate an
1988 at the age of sixty, he worked only in spurts, identity at a certain level, say A = B, we must create a
nonetheless leaving a significant “posthumous” new object on the level just above, which performs the
body of work. transformation from A to B. It is, therefore, a kind of
There are three main texts: À la poursuite des dynamic theory of relations. In spirit, it is analogous to a
champs (Pursuing Stacks),18 written in 1983, is a Russell-Whitehead theory of types, but with a geometric
component; in fact, Grothendieck conceives of his stacks
17 as generalizations of homotopy theory (which studies de-
The epistemological shift was characteristic: for Che-
formations in geometry). His fusion of logic and geometry,
valley, who invented the name in 1955, it indicated the
nascent in stacks and toposes, is one of the most promising
scheme or skeleton of an algebraic variety, which re-
doors Grothendieck opened.
mained the central object. For Grothendieck, the scheme
20
is the focal point, the source of all the projections and all Alexander Grothendieck, “Esquisse d’un programme”
the incarnations. (Sketch of a Program), 1984 manuscript, published in
18
The mathematician Ronald Brown explains the compli- later form in Pierre Lochak and Leila Schneps, eds., Geo-
cated history of this document in “The origins of Alexander metric Galois Actions: Volume 1. Around Grothendieck’s
Grothendieck's ‘Pursuing Stacks’.” …there are links to sites Esquisse d’un Programme, London Mathematical Society
from which the manuscript may be downloaded in full or Lecture Notes 242 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
in parts. (inference-review.com/article/a-country- Press, 1997) 5–48; English translation 243–83.
21
known-only-by-name#footnote-18 and pages.ban- Alexandre Grothendieck [sic], “La longue marche à trav-
gor.ac.uk/~mas010/pstacks.htm) Brown also includes ers la théorie de Galois:” transcription d’un manuscrit
interesting correspondence among mathematicians inédit, Volume 1 (The Long March Through Galois Theory:
about corrections to the text and about Grothendieck, the Transcript of an Unedited Manuscript), edited and with
man and his work. The links from some of these entries a foreword by Jean Malgoire (Montpellier: Université
point to other discussions among mathematicians about Montpellier II, Département des Sciences Mathématiques,
Grothendieck in general and this manuscript in particular. 1995).

378 Notices of the AMS Volume 62, Number 4


Autopsy of an Œuvre in a fantastic register of language. And this is all
the more surprising and striking because his native
The Editing of the Geometric Corpus
language was German, the only language he used
Published in two series, Grothendieck’s work in
to communicate with his mother until her death.
algebraic geometry amounts to more than ten
But if he long thought in German, he nevertheless
thousand pages. Entitled Éléments de Géométrie Al-
subsequently acquired an acute sense of French;
gébrique (Elements of Algebraic Geometry, or ÉGA),
his bilingualism allowed him to play discerningly
an appeal to both Euclid’s Elements and Bourbaki,
the first was written entirely by Dieudonné, and with Germanisms.
has remained unfinished; of the thirteen parts that The Great Problems
were initially planned, only four were written. The Having a taste for symbolism, Grothendieck
second series, the composition of which was more recognized twelve disciples, just as he divided
tumultuous, is called Séminaires de Géométrie Al- Récoltes et Semailles into twelve themes, of which
gébrique (Seminars in Algebraic Geometry, or SGA) I will only comment on a few. A large number of
and comprises seven parts. It covers the Seminars the themes concern Grothendieck’s grand enter-
in the Bois-Marie (named after the location of the prise: algebraic geometry. The great problems
IHÉS), which Grothendieck led from 1960 to 1969. constitute great enigmas, whose relatively simple
The first two parts were written by Grothendieck, formulation offers no obvious point of attack.
or under his control, and he personally supervised What was improperly known as Fermat’s Last
their publication; as for the third, it was essentially Theorem was a conjecture of Biblical simplicity:
written by Pierre Gabriel and Michel Demazure the relation an + bn = cn is impossible if a, b, c, n
(whose dissertation was extracted from this work). are whole numbers, unless n = 2. Andrew Wiles
Afterward, things became more complex. When and Richard Taylor required a large and complex
Grothendieck abandoned the mathematical scene edifice, based largely on Weil and Grothendieck’s
in 1970, he left behind unfinished business, and methods, to establish the proof. The most presti-
the workplace was in a pitiful state. He left inde- gious and confusing of contemporary problems is
cipherable manuscripts, mimeographed lectures the Riemann Conjecture. In 1930, Helmut Hasse
from the seminars, notes for publication. They (following Emil Artin and Friedrich Schmidt)
needed to be synthesized and the (sizeable) gaps formulated and solved a problem similar to the
filled in; it was an epic task. Luc Illusie and Pierre Riemann Conjecture by translating it into the form
Deligne accomplished all of this with great fidel- of an inequality. The next step would occupy Weil
ity and filial piety. The centerpiece, in view of the from 1940 to 1948. When Weil formulated his
Weil conjectures, is SGA 4, dedicated to the most famous conjectures in 1949, he was guided by
innovative of ideas. But when Deligne announced these ideas.
his proof of the Weil conjectures in 1974, experts For Grothendieck, the Weil conjectures are not
considered the foundations of his proof to be so much interesting in themselves, but as a test
incomplete. Deligne then published (along with of his general vision. Grothendieck distinguished
the missing link from the Grothendieck seminar, between builders and explorers in mathematics,
SGA 5) an additional volume, which he basically viewing himself as both at once. Grothendieck’s
drafted by himself, titled, curiously, SGA 4½. favorite method was similar to Joshua’s for con-
Grothendieck dismissed the entire enterprise. quering Jericho. One must seize the place by sap-
This was not what he, Grothendieck, had had ping it; at a certain point, it succumbs without a
in mind; his plans had been truncated; they had fight. Grothendieck was convinced that if one had
betrayed him. He described his feelings by means a sufficiently unifying vision of mathematics, if
of a strong image: that of a team of builders who, one could sufficiently penetrate its conceptual
now that their Master is dead, disperse, each one essence, then particular problems would be noth-
carrying away his own sketches and tools. It would ing but tests that no longer need to be solved for
be a morally powerful image were it not for the their own sake.
fact that, far from dying, the Master had simply This fashion of conceiving of mathematics
abandoned his team. worked quite well for Grothendieck, even if his
Grothendieck had a taste and a talent for nam- dreams tended to make him go too far at times and
ing things, which he used as a major intellectual he needed the correcting influence of Dieudonné
strategy. Thus, my title, “A Country Known Only and Serre. Deligne knew every trick of his master’s
by Name,” is an homage to his way with words. trade by heart, every concept, every variant. His
He had a special talent for naming things before proof, given in 1974, is a marvel of precision; the
possessing and conquering them, and many of steps follow each other in a natural order, without
his terminological choices were remarkable. He surprise. Every lecture by Grothendieck introduced
sought mental images to illustrate his scientific a whole new world of concepts, each more general
ideas; these included la belle demeure parfaite (the than the one before. I think that this opposition of
perfect mansion) and le beau château dont on a methods, or rather of temperaments, is the true
hérité (the beautiful, inherited castle). He described reason behind the personal conflict that pushed
himself as a builder. He juggled all these allegories them apart. That John, the disciple Jesus loved,

April 2015 Notices of the AMS 379


wrote the last Gospel by himself played a role, presentation of Zariski-Chevalley-Nagata. Schemes
perhaps, in the sullen exile that Grothendieck are thus a way of encoding systems of equations
imposed upon himself. as well as the transformations to which one may
The Method subject them.
We now arrive at the very heart of the unifying Grothendieck presented the Galois problem
vision of Grothendieck’s mathematical method. in the following manner: a scheme is an absolute
Of the twelve great ideas of which he was justly object, X, say; the choice of a field of constants
proud, he placed three above the others. He offered (or a field of definition) corresponds to the choice
them in the form of a progression from schemes of another scheme S and a morphism πX from X
to motives: to S.22 In the theory of schemes, a commutative
ring is identified with a scheme, its spectrum.23 A
SCHEMETOPOSMOTIVE
homomorphism from ring A to ring B likewise
His whole scientific strategy was, indeed, orga- maps, inversely, the spectrum of B into the spec-
nized around a progression of increasingly general trum of A. Moreover, the spectrum of a field has
concepts. The image that comes to my mind is a a single underlying point (even though many dif-
Buddhist temple that I visited in Vietnam in 1980. ferent points exist, in this sense); consequently,
According to tradition, the altar comprised a series giving the field of definition as being included
of rising steps, at the top of which lay an enormous in the universal domain corresponds to giving a
reclining figure of the Buddha. When we follow scheme morphism πT from T to S. A solution of
Grothendieck’s work throughout its development, the system of equations X, with the domain of
we likewise sense that we’re gradually evolving constants S, with values in the universal domain
toward perfection. The motives represented, in his T, corresponds to a morphism ϕ from T to X such
mind, the final stage, the one he hadn’t yet reached. that πT is the composition of ϕ and πT.
He had, however, reached the two intermediate What admirable simplicity! Modern mathemat-
stages (scheme and topos). ics rests upon the primacy of sets. Once one has
accepted the existence of sets and the construc-
The Trilogy tions made from them, every mathematical object
Schemes becomes a set and coincides with the set of its
The term itself was coined by Chevalley, although points.24 Transformations are, in principle, trans-
accepted in a more restrictive sense than the term formations of points.25 In the various forms of
as used by Grothendieck. In Foundations of Alge- geometry (differential, metric, affine, algebraic),
braic Geometry, André Weil had introduced into the central object is the variety, considered as a set
algebraic geometry the methods used by his men- of points.26 And for Grothendieck, the scheme is
tor, Élie Cartan, in differential geometry (following the internal mechanism, the matrix that generates
Carl Friedrich Gauss and Jean Darboux). But Weil’s the space’s points.27
method was by no means intrinsic, and Chevalley The purely mathematical analysis, Gelfand’s
wondered what was invariant, in Weil’s sense of and then Grothendieck’s, of the notion of
variety. The answer, inspired by Zariski’s work, a point was discovered after a fundamental reeval-
was simple and elegant: the scheme of an algebraic uation of the status of the point in quantum
variety is the collection of local rings of the sub-
22
varieties found inside the rational function field. From the start, this is based on the philosophy of catego-
There is no need for an explicit topology, a point ries: we define the category of schemes, with its objects
of distinction between Chevalley and Serre, who (the schemes) and its transformations (morphisms); a
at roughly the same time introduced his algebraic morphism ƒ links two schemes X and Y, which is symbol-
ized by ƒ: XY.
varieties using Zariski topologies and sheaves.
23
Each of the two approaches had advantages, but Gelfand’s fundamental idea was to associate a normed
also limitations: Serre had an algebraically closed commutative algebra to a space. Grothendieck dated his
base field; Chevalley had to work only with irreduc- first investment in functional analysis to exactly the time,
post–1945, when Gelfand’s theory assumed its centrality.
ible varieties. In both cases, the two fundamental
The term “spectrum” comes directly from Gelfand.
problems of products of varieties and base change
24This
could only be approached indirectly. All the same, set must be structured, which is done using a set-
Chevalley’s point of view was better suited to theoretic version of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North
Whitehead’s theory of types.
future extensions to arithmetic, as Nagata soon
25But
observed. the possibility of considering, say, lines or circles
Évariste Galois was certainly the first to notice in space as points of a new space makes it possible to
incorporate the geometry of transformations of points
the polarity between equations and their solu-
into lines or circles.
tions. One must distinguish between the domain
26In
in which coefficients of the algebraic equation are the sense of the domain of variation.
chosen and the domain in which solutions are 27Iam using the word “matrix” here in its customary
sought. Grothendieck created a synthesis out of sense, not in the usual mathematical sense (a table of
these ideas, based in essence on the conceptual numbers).

380 Notices of the AMS Volume 62, Number 4


physics. The most systematic expression of this a category, since it includes at most one transfor-
reevaluation is Alain Connes’ noncommutative mation between two given objects. Grothendieck
geometry. The synthesis is far from complete. thus proposed replacing the lattice of open sets
The increasingly manifest kinship between with the category of spread-out open sets. When
the Grothendieck Teichmüller28 group and the adapted to algebraic geometry, this idea solves a
renormalization group in quantum field theory fundamental difficulty, since there is no implicit
is doubtless only the first manifestation of function theorem for algebraic functions. Sheaves
a symmetry group operating on the fundamen- can now be considered as special functors on the
tal constants of physics, a kind of cosmic Ga- lattice of open sets (viewed as a category), and can
lois group.29 Grothendieck did not predict this thus be generalized to étale sheaves, which are
development, and probably would not even have special functors of the étale topology.
welcomed it, owing to his prejudices against phys- Grothendieck would successfully play many
ics (due in large part to his vehement rejection of variations on this theme in the context of various
the military-industrial complex). problems of geometric construction (for example,
In Récoltes et Semailles, Grothendieck for a mo- the problem of modules for algebraic curves). His
ment compared himself to Einstein in his contri- greatest success in this regard would be the étale
bution to the problem of space. His contribution “-adic” cohomology of schemes, the cohomologi-
is indeed of the same magnitude.30 Einstein and cal theory needed to attack the Weil conjectures.
Grothendieck both deepened a particular vision But there is still another step towards abstrac-
in which space is not an empty receptacle for phe- tion. Consider the progression:
nomena, but the principal actor in the life of the
world and the history of the universe. SCHEMEÉTALE COHOMOLOGYÉTALE SHEAVES
Toposes Grothendieck realized that one could pass di-
Let us now consider toposes.31 Unlike schemes, rectly to the last step, and that all the geometric
toposes generate geometry without points. In fact, properties of a scheme are encoded in the category
nothing prevents us from proposing an axiomatic of étale sheaves. This category belongs to a par-
framework for geometry in which points, lines, and ticular type of categories that he called “toposes.”
planes would all be on the same footing. Thus we Here, then, is the last act of the play. Grothen-
know axiomatic systems for projective geometry dieck had noticed that the sheaves on a given space
(George Birkhoff) in which the primitive notion formed a category that basically had the same
is that of a plate (a generalization of lines and properties as the category of sets. But Kurt Gödel
planes), and in which the fundamental relationship and Paul Cohen had already demonstrated that
is that of incidence. In mathematics, we consider a there were various nonequivalent models of set
class of partially ordered sets called lattices; each theory. It was thus natural to explore the relations
of these corresponds to a distinct geometry.32 that might exist between toposes and models of
In the geometry of a topological space, the lat- set theory. Grothendieck knew nothing of logic and
tice of open sets plays a starring role, while points probably despised it just as thoroughly as he did
are relatively minor. But Grothendieck’s originality physics. It was for others (especially Jean Bénabou,
was to reprise Riemann’s idea that multivalued William Lawvere and Myles Tierney) to solve the
functions actually live not on open sets of the riddle: toposes perfectly embodied intuitionistic
complex plane, but on spread-out Riemann sur- models of set theory. The principle of the excluded
faces. The spread-out Riemann surfaces project middle is not valid. It is most remarkable that this
down to each other and thus form the objects of logic was invented by an illustrious topologist,
a category. However, a lattice is a special case of Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, and with hindsight,
it arises very naturally because intuitionistic logics
28Named by Drinfeld, one of the mathematicians who
may be given topological interpretations.33
penetrated most deeply into Grothendieck’s Esquisse.
Motives
29Mostnotably in Dirk Kreimer and Alain Connes’ recent There remain the motives. The image to which
reformulation. Grothendieck appealed was a rocky coastline at
30
Also, don’t forget Einstein’s deep commitment to the night illuminated by a rotating lighthouse, one
struggle against militarism, following a political trajectory revealing one part of the coast and then another.
closely related to Grothendieck’s. Similarly, we see the various known cohomological
31
Some purists would like the plural to read “topoi,” as in theories, many of which he himself invented, be-
classical Greek. I will follow Grothendieck, writing “topos” fore we return to the source and build a lighthouse
and “toposes.” that will depict a unified landscape. In some sense,
32
We must assume the existence of a largest and small- the scientific strategy is the opposite of the one
est element (the empty set and the universal set), and of used in the universe of schemes.
intersections and joins of two plates. In the past twenty
years, this point of view was developed anew under the 33
A topological version of the fact that the double nega-
name “matroid” or “combinatorial geometry” (mainly by tion of a proposition is not necessarily equivalent to it in
Gian-Carlo Rota and Henry Crapo). intuitionistic logic.

April 2015 Notices of the AMS 381


Grothendieck never published anything on this Instead of a Conclusion
subject. He merely made a few remarks. Vladimir Mathematicians see themselves as the most objec-
Voevodsky made the most ambitious contribution tive of the scientists. If it is to be communicated
to this area by constructing a category of objects without distortion, the mathematics must be
called motives. But in such a category, pieces of detached from the mathematician. The mathema-
objects can migrate like wandering genes. The tician must be allowed decently to disappear. In
image of a genetic inheritance seems to me quite practice, this disappearance is quite effective.
relevant. This was made possible by the use of Grothendieck represents a special case. He
Deligne’s definition of weight, the centerpiece in lived apart from the world, much more so than
his proof of the Weil conjectures. the caricatured absent-minded professor. Even in
The tool created by Voevodsky might have met his mathematical milieu, he wasn’t quite a member
Grothendieck’s expectations, but it was difficult of the family. He pursued a kind of monologue,
to use. The right tools should be easy to use. or rather, a dialogue with mathematics and God,
Thus what progress has been made has only been which to him were one and the same. His work is
accomplished by restricting our ambitions to such unique in that it didn’t efface his fantasies and
objects as mixed Hodge structures or mixed Tate obsessions, but rather lived in their company
motives. These are expressions of a fundamental and nourished them. He gave us a body of purely
group of symmetries, like the Grothendieck- mathematical work, and simultaneously offered
Teichmüller group. Even in this small field, there is what he held to be its meaning.
already an enormous amount of work to be done His life was burned by the fire of the spirit,
to unearth inestimable treasures. Grothendieck and he continued to search for a country and for
complained that all this was too economical, too a name. I believe the country was Galicia, and the
reasonable; he heaped reproaches on the trades- name was that of his father.
men from his visionary height. But it seems to me
that in the presence of mathematical visionaries,
such as Grothendieck or Robert Langlands, the
right scientific strategy consists in isolating a piece
that is precise and narrow enough that we can
make progress, but also sufficiently vast to yield
interesting results.

Anatomy of an Author: The Religious


Return
What is striking about Grothendieck, at first, is an
expression of suffering: suffering that work was
left unfinished, the feeling of having been betrayed
by his collaborators and followers. In a moment of
true lucidity, he said something like, “I was the only
person to have the breath of inspiration, and what
I transmitted to those around me wasn’t inspira-
tion, but a job. I had workmen around me, but none
of them really had inspiration!” The comment is
deep and true, but it doesn’t explain why he delib-
erately closed the mouth from which that breath
emanated. From what we know of his life today, he
is subject to cyclical crises of depression. It seems
to me that his capacity for scientific creation was
the best antidote to his depression, and that his
immersion in a lively scientific milieu (the Bourbaki
group and the IHÉS) favored his creativity.
But here I’d like, especially, to mention the re-
ligious aspect of his life, which he claims is deep
and permanent. He says that he has had visual and
auditory hallucinations. He describes these divine
apparitions in Récoltes et Semailles, writing that
he sings Gospels in two voices simultaneously, his
own and God’s. It was following a series of these
hallucinations or apparitions that he sent out a
public eschatological message, unaccountably
unanswered. Most disturbing is his obsession with
the Devil. He is drafting a report.

382 Notices of the AMS Volume 62, Number 4

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