Live data from Hacker News

Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics

quantamagazine.org

11–20 of 36 posts

Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics

#11
post #10
post #5

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.

Take 111 as an example.

Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics

#12
post #10
post #5

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.

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.

Re: Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics

#13

Earlier 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?

Personally, just from the implausible level of first-person detail throughout I thought it's immediately clear the book is exceptionally well-researched but still technically qualifies as historical-fiction. We don't necessarily know what these people thought/ate/did minute by minute on the important days at that level.

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

#15
If anyone's interested in Grothendieck's writing, which is primarily in French, I threw his "Séminaires de Géométrie Algébrique" (SGA, Algebraic Geometry Seminars) and "Éléments de Géométrie Algébrique" (EGA, Elements of Algebraic Geometry) into an LLM to translate it to English. It's spotty in some sections, so I intend to do another pass, but it's better than my remedial French.

EGA: 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

#16
post #10

Earlier 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.

In fact, most 2 digit numbers not divisible by 2, 3, or 5 are prime. [1] The only one that's likely to ruin your day is 7 * 13 == 91, but that's self-defeating because after you think about it long enough 91 falls victim to [2].

[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

#20
post #18

For anyone interested in Grothendieck's opinions on kimchi … https://mikepierce.github.io/grothendieck-kimchi/translation...

all mention of aekjeot (fish sauce) and saeujeot (tiny shrimp) seems to be elided here. kimchi in coastal regions (and most commercialized korean kimchi) has a strong tendency to have that in, so if you take grothendieck's recipe as is, you won't have the exported korean taste. northern kimchis have diverged materially in addition, due to north korea being fucked up. aekjeot you can just add but the procedure to add saeujeot traditionally is pretty fiddly

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

Post reply on HN