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What motivates a research mathematician to publish their work under a collective pseudonym? I can't imagine that something like that is good for one's career.
I don't think that anything published under Bourbaki's name is considered research work, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a necessary "pendulum". I doubt that if Bourbaki hadn't existed, then the likes of Arnold would have not produced their beautiful (and useful) advice on mathematical pedagogy.
Nope; that's not an argument but a platitude.
Edit: ok, that may be a stretch, but I thought it was amusing because my comment could also be interpreted as describing itself.
I think this is like saying: the greatest scientist of all time is "et al", who mastered all disciplines (including mathematics). Edit (clarification): I mean, by conflating multiple people's work as one (by whatever criteria, in this case a common pseudonym), comparison becomes meaningless.
> I mean, by conflating multiple people's work as one (by whatever criteria, in this case a common pseudonym), comparison becomes meaningless.
Meaningless in a strict sense. But good enough as a hook for an article.
Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that anything published under Bourbaki's name is considered research work, though.
Exactly. I think the goal was to formalize and codify mathematics. They didn't publish any original papers.
I assume they were lacunae in the literature that came up while writing the books, but Wikipedia doesn't explain.
I feel like Bourbaki set back teaching mathematics a great deal, by focusing too much on the abstraction rather than the concepts and intuition behind it. V.I. Arnol'd does a better job of elucidating on this idea than I ever could in his "On Teaching Mathematics": https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
In the early days of HN, there was a super prolific user nickb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickb I always thought it was an homage to Nicolas Bourbaki by pg and his friends who were using that account as a sock puppet. It was disputed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21825207 I guess we'll never know.
1. Create an account.
2. To know the password, you visit a service that gives you the password.
3. The service changes the password immediately in 10 seconds before which you login.
4. You can now post stuff with the account but can't change the password allowing another user to chime in.
Now the service basically needs to not allow another user to login in 10 seconds. If the website doesn't allow multiple users to login then there needs to be an etiquette of one user at a time, although you can kick off the user after a definite amount of time if the website allows logout from all sessions.
I feel like Bourbaki set back teaching mathematics a great deal, by focusing too much on the abstraction rather than the concepts and intuition behind it. V.I. Arnol'd does a better job of elucidating on this idea than I ever could in his "On Teaching Mathematics": https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html
Bourbaki makes terrible introductory textbooks, but are great references when you are already motivated and just want an efficient presentation.
In the early days of HN, there was a super prolific user nickb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickb I always thought it was an homage to Nicolas Bourbaki by pg and his friends who were using that account as a sock puppet. It was disputed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21825207 I guess we'll never know.
I think this is like saying: the greatest scientist of all time is "et al", who mastered all disciplines (including mathematics). Edit (clarification): I mean, by conflating multiple people's work as one (by whatever criteria, in this case a common pseudonym), comparison becomes meaningless.
The latter is a common snowclone especially in headlines, like (from https://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+*+*+you+haven%27t+hea...) “The Most Important Filmmaker You Haven't Heard Of”, “The Coolest Apps You Haven't Heard Of”, “Meet Vulfpeck, the best band you haven't heard of yet” — e.g. the last one doesn't mean that Vulfpeck is the best band, just that among bands you (probably) haven't heard of, it's (according to the author) the best.
What motivates a research mathematician to publish their work under a collective pseudonym? I can't imagine that something like that is good for one's career.
It was done for the advancement of mathematics , not something so trifling as an individual's career. Explaining this makes me feel incredibly old.