the bourbaki code

Roy Lisker (remember him from the Mormoiron post?) has written up his Grothendieck-quest(s), available for just 23$, and with this strange blurb-text:

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We would love to conclude this series by finding the location of the "final" Grothendieck-spot, before his 85th birthday, this thursday.

But, the road ahead will be treacherous, with imaginary villages along the way and some other traps planted by the nice people of the Grothendieck Fan Club

Before we start the quest for the final G-spot, hopefully in time for Grothendieck's 85th birthday, one more post on Alexandre's 'hippy-days'.

One week from now, Alexandre Grothendieck will turn 85. Today, we'll have a glance at his 'wilder years', the early 70ties, when he resigned from the IHES and became one of the leading figures in the French eco-movement. This iconic picture is from those days

The text reads:

"Schurik entre les "frères ennemis" Gaston Galan et Dyama, rue Polonceau.

Derrière, Chantal et Motito (femme et fille de Gaston)."

With Grothendieck's 85th brithday coming up, march 28th, we continue our rather erratic quest to locate the spots that once meant a lot to him.

Ever wondered what Grothendieck's last-known hideout looked like? Well, here's the answer:

(h/t gruppe eM)

And, here's the story.

In a couple of days, on march 28th, Alexandre Grothendieck will turn 85.

To mark the occasion we'll run a little series, tracking down places where he used to live, hoping to entice some of these villages in the south of France to update their Wikipedia-page by adding under 'Personnalités liées à la commune' the line

- Alexandre Grothendieck (né en 1928), mathématicien français ayant reçu la Médaille Fields.

A classic among mathematical jokes is the paper in the August/September 1938 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly "A contribution to the mathematical theory of big game hunting" by one Hector Petard of Princeton who would marry, one year later, Nicolas Bourbaki's daughter Betti.

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The footnote on page E. II.6 in Bourbaki's 1970 edition of "Theorie des ensembles" reads

If this is completely obvious to you, stop reading now and start getting a life. For the rest of us, it took me quite some time before i was able to parse this formula, and when i finally did, it only added to my initial confusion.

According to Jean van Heijenoort, the sad state of logic in France after WW2 was largely caused by the untimely death of several key French logicians/mathematical philosophers.

Prepping for my course on the history of mathematics, starting next week, i'm trying out a couple of tools, such as Timeline JS. Below, a mini timeline of the deaths of these 5 unfortunate mathematicians.

In the spring of 2009 I did spend a fortnight dog-sitting in a huge house in the countryside, belonging to my parents-in-law, who both passed away the year before.

That particular day it was raining and thundering heavily. To distract myself from the sombre and spooky atmosphere in the house I began to surf the web looking for material for a new series of blogposts (yes, in those days I was still thinking in 'series' of posts...).