Arxiv:1402.0409V1 [Math.HO]
THE PICARD SCHEME STEVEN L. KLEIMAN Abstract. This article introduces, informally, the substance and the spirit of Grothendieck’s theory of the Picard scheme, highlighting its elegant simplicity, natural generality, and ingenious originality against the larger historical record. 1. Introduction A scientific biography should be written in which we indicate the “flow” of mathematics ... discussing a certain aspect of Grothendieck’s work, indicating possible roots, then describing the leap Grothendieck made from those roots to general ideas, and finally setting forth the impact of those ideas. Frans Oort [60, p. 2] Alexander Grothendieck sketched his proof of the existence of the Picard scheme in his February 1962 Bourbaki talk. Then, in his May 1962 Bourbaki talk, he sketched his proofs of various general properties of the scheme. Shortly afterwards, these two talks were reprinted in [31], commonly known as FGA, along with his commentaries, which included statements of nine finiteness theorems that refine the single finiteness theorem in his May talk and answer several related questions. However, Grothendieck had already defined the Picard scheme, via the functor it represents, on pp.195-15,16 of his February 1960 Bourbaki talk. Furthermore, on p.212-01 of his February 1961 Bourbaki talk, he had announced that the scheme can be constructed by combining results on quotients sketched in that talk along with results on the Hilbert scheme to be sketched in his forthcoming May 1961 Bourbaki talk. Those three talks plus three earlier talks, which prepare the way, were also reprinted in [31]. arXiv:1402.0409v1 [math.HO] 3 Feb 2014 Moreover, Grothendieck noted in [31, p.
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