{"id":7335,"date":"2014-11-13T18:41:58","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T23:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7335"},"modified":"2017-10-01T17:25:28","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T21:25:28","slug":"alexandre-grothendieck-1928-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7335","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Grothendieck 1928-2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just heard that Alexander Grothendieck passed away today, at the age of 86, in Saint-Girons.  For a French news story, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liberation.fr\/sciences\/2014\/11\/13\/alexandre-grothendieck-ou-la-mort-d-un-genie-qui-voulait-se-faire-oublier_1142614\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Grothendieck&#8217;s story was one of the great romantic stories of modern mathematics, and many would consider him the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century.  For some blog entries about him here, see for example <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=78\">this<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=775\">this<\/a>.  I&#8217;ll add other links as I see them or think of them. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  For some blog entries about Grothendieck&#8217;s recent life, you could start <a href=\"http:\/\/www.neverendingbooks.org\/le-petit-village-de-lariege\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>One of the best places to learn about Grothendieck is from his friend Pierre Cartier, in an article that can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/inference-review.com\/article\/a-country-known-only-by-name\">here<\/a>, among other places.<\/p>\n<p>Le Monde now has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/disparitions\/article\/2014\/11\/14\/le-mathematicien-alexandre-grothendieck-est-mort_4523482_3382.html\">an obituary<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Steve Landsburg has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebigquestions.com\/2014\/11\/13\/the-rising-sea\/\">blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: The news about Grothendieck came out in the French press a day ago, but at this point the only things I&#8217;ve seen in the English-language press are an AP wire story, and this at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/europe\/greatest-mathematician-of-the-20th-century-and-the-most-important-scientific-mind-youve-never-heard-of-alexander-grothendieck-dies-aged-86-9862306.html\">Independent<\/a>.  Come on science journalists, if any story about mathematics and mathematicians is worth writing about, this one is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  There are now obituaries at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/16\/world\/europe\/alexander-grothendieck-math-enigma-dies-at-86.html\">New York Times<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/obituaries\/11231703\/Alexander-Grothendieck-obituary.html\">Telegraph<\/a>.  The IHES has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ihes.fr\/jsp\/site\/Portal.jsp?document_id=3593&#038;portlet_id=1122\">page at their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just heard that Alexander Grothendieck passed away today, at the age of 86, in Saint-Girons. For a French news story, see here. Grothendieck&#8217;s story was one of the great romantic stories of modern mathematics, and many would consider him &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7335\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituaries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7335"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7345,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7335\/revisions\/7345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}