A (very) Brief History of Alexander Grothendieck

In this episode, we cover the history of 20th century mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, most notable for being the father of modern algebraic geometry. He is considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century.

As per usual, I don't go too deeply into the mathematics, largely just covering his history. Hope you enjoy!

[DC-zise]

This guy is such a great inspiration of mine. He along with Von Neumann, Shannon and Kolmogorov, changed 20th century mathematics.

[raphaellago]

what a coincidence, when i start studying the life of Alexander Grothendieck you post this video. Thank you

[alexandersanchez]

Talent is doing something hard; genius is doing easily that which others find impossible. Grothendieck's style of the rising sea is genius distilled in mathematics.

[Cam-vvxd]

Th quality of these videos foreshows a massive boom in your youtube influence. These are amazing vids!

[abstractnonsense]

This is a great idea for a channel. I'll have to watch more brief biographies of mathematicians.




One constructive criticism, if I may. Don't put so much emphasis on pronunciation. Even if the pronunciations of non english names were correct, emphasising them strongly would still take away from the flow of the story. It's more engaging to focus on the history and on how interesting these people were.

[supriyapaul]

What an extraordinary man !!Thank you very much for sharing so much information about him.

[gogigaga]

INCREDIBLE WORK. REALLY WELL DONE SIMPLE AND DETAILED AT THE SAME TIME WELL DONE.( The only little hic up is using Oppenheimer's photo when you talked about Motchane.)

[gucker]

Wow, I knew nothing about Grothendieck; what a great man! Thank you for this and the other your videos!

[brandonwalker]

One of my professor's actually had the chance to meet Grothendieck before he went into seclusion!

[JUNGLEsausage]

Nice biography, but if I'm going to nitpick I would note that that was not Léon Motchane, but Oppenheimer in the picture.

[srr]

What a beautiful story. What a great man. I wish I could say the same about his math... if I could understand it.

[NikolajKuntner]

Thanks!
There's some voice recordings of him on youtube.

[pourtoukist]

I appreciate the effort you put in the correct prononciation of the french names

[prefabrication]

Amazing video! Especially to listen to when doing mathematics.

[lina]

Very well-made video; thank you for making it.

[jean-christopheMiquel-efur]

French's prononciation isn't bad.
Very interesting for us.
Thanks for uploading!

[lupo-femme]

If you can read Spanish, I greatly recommend Colombian mathematician and philosopher Fernando Zalamea's book on him titled "Grothendieck: Una guía a la obra matemática y filosófica" (Grothendieck: a guide to the mathematical and philosophical work) which is basically the first work to lay out a wide and general view of Grothendieck's writings and incomparable achievements, chronologically and in mathematical and philosophical depth.

There's also Zalamea's "Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics" (from Urbanomic, in Spanish and English) which proposes a synthetic vision of the philosophy of mathematics with case studies of the practice of contemporary math, instead of the dominant analytic visions which tend to reduce everything to language. Zalamea's book is a an attempt to dismantle this scholastic and obsolete prejudice, and constantly refers to Grothendieck's toposes and sheaf's as an aid in this battle and in themselves marking a paradigm shift in the practice, vision, and foundations of mathematics.

[ayushkumarjais]

Nice video man I got first great biography of my math hero.

[feraudyh]

The background music is Ralph Vaughn Williams' 5th symphony.

[johnryan]

He was so right about academia being a den of piratical stab in the back merchants.