One of my favourite Grothendieck stories from https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... >: > One striking characteristic of Grothendieck's mode of thinking is that it seemed to rely so little on examples. This can be seen in the legend of the so-called "Grothendieck prime". In a mathematical conversation, someone suggested to Grothendieck that they should consider a particular prime number. "You…
I had to follow your link to get it: I hadn't realized that 57 is not prime. At least I'm in good company.
Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
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Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#12One of my favourite Grothendieck stories from https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... >: > One striking characteristic of Grothendieck's mode of thinking is that it seemed to rely so little on examples. This can be seen in the legend of the so-called "Grothendieck prime". In a mathematical conversation, someone suggested to Grothendieck that they should consider a particular prime number. "You…
I had to follow your link to get it: I hadn't realized that 57 is not prime. At least I'm in good company.
(The simplest test being of course if the number is even and bigger than 2)
Edit: now that I think about it, probably should not have tried to impose ordering to the simplicity of tests. There's of course the divisibility by 5 test, which is even simpler.
Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
That book is fiction with a factual veneer. I liked it a lot until I started realizing that many of the details were made up. Then I couldn't read any more. It was like when TwoSetViolin described what it was like for them to watch movies with musician characters played, unrealistically, by non-musician actors. You'd be watching the perfectly fine movie until you noticed that the bananas were blue instead of yellow,…
I read and enjoyed that book out of a general interest in the history of ideas, but admit I am not able to judge the underlying mathematics. Is the "fiction" part only related to descriptions of his mathematical contributions, or are there problems with the biographical information as well?
But I think the biggest "sin" in terms of mixing fact/fiction was mostly implied and not actually stated. What's implied is that Groth saw inside mathematics some kind of terrible truth that motivated him to stop working and withdraw from the world. I don't think it's stated explicitly, but due to proximity with other topics in the book, reader is invited to conclude that there was a discovery of some kind inevitable doom, possibly a super weapon, etc.
We don't know that, but in a lot of ways it might be more surprising if he never thought along those lines. My understanding is that the other limited sources really do say he was talking to God in dreams, preoccupied with apocalyptic visions, became more interested in physics, politics, religion, the problem of evil, hostile entities ambiguously demonic, etc
Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#14Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#15EGA: https://github.com/jcreinhold/ega (https://jcreinhold.github.io/ega/)
SGA: https://github.com/jcreinhold/sga (https://jcreinhold.github.io/sga/)
Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to follow your link to get it: I hadn't realized that 57 is not prime. At least I'm in good company.
It looks like a prime, but can be caught with the second-simplest test: sum of the digits is 12, which is divisible by 3. Hence it's divisible by 3. (The simplest test being of course if the number is even and bigger than 2) Edit: now that I think about it, probably should not have tried to impose ordering to the simplicity of tests. There's of course the divisibility by 5 test, which is even simpler.
[1] https://til.andrew-quinn.me/posts/most-2-digit-numbers-not-d...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox
Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#17Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#18https://mikepierce.github.io/grothendieck-kimchi/translation...
Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#19Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
#20For anyone interested in Grothendieck's opinions on kimchi … https://mikepierce.github.io/grothendieck-kimchi/translation...
he mentions using whatever herbs he had in a european setting like juniper and rosemary but the canonical herb to add is korean chives and dropwort. never seen juniper or rosemary, frankly.
he does mention that the pepper is a specific variety in korea without exception. this is the korean chili, sun-dried and flaked. it's a very distinctive varietal, the taste will be very different without it