The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck, Volume 51, Number 9
Comme Appelé du Néant— As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck Allyn Jackson This is the first part of a two-part article about the life of Alexandre Grothendieck. The second part of the article will appear in the next issue of the Notices. Et toute science, quand nous l’enten- the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) dons non comme un instrument de pou- and received the Fields Medal in 1966—suffice to voir et de domination, mais comme secure his place in the pantheon of twentieth cen- aventure de connaissance de notre es- tury mathematics. But such details cannot capture pèce à travers les âges, n’est autre chose the essence of his work, which is rooted in some- que cette harmonie, plus ou moins vaste thing far more organic and humble. As he wrote in et plus ou moins riche d’une époque à his long memoir, Récoltes et Semailles (Reapings and l’autre, qui se déploie au cours des Sowings, R&S), “What makes the quality of a re- générations et des siècles, par le délicat searcher’s inventiveness and imagination is the contrepoint de tous les thèmes apparus quality of his attention to hearing the voices of tour à tour, comme appelés du néant. things” (emphasis in the original, page P27). Today Grothendieck’s own voice, embodied in his written And every science, when we understand works, reaches us as if through a void: now seventy- it not as an instrument of power and six years old, he has for more than a decade lived domination but as an adventure in in seclusion in a remote hamlet in the south of knowledge pursued by our species France.
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