Alexander Grothendieck - A Country Known Only by Name
Alexander Grothendieck - A Country Known Only by Name
Alexander Grothendieck - A Country Known Only by Name
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.
Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.
Alternative Proxies: