28,000 pages by Alexandre Grothendieck
He transformed the landscape of mathematics. Alexandre Grothendieck left behind some 28,000 unpublished pages. This treasure trove, which may hold the master’s final flashes of genius, is finally being unveiled. The website dedicated to the Grothendieck archives has gone live.
Alexandre Grothendieck passed away on November 13, 2014, at the age of 86. For many years, the enfant terrible of mathematics had distanced himself from the scientific community. Having taken refuge in Lasserre, a small village in the Pyrenees, he lived there as a recluse. The reformer of algebraic geometry, the greatest mathematician of the 20th century—as many of his peers called him—had chosen silence.
Peace and environmental activist
“Should we continue our research?” this peace activist and advocate of radical ecology asked himself very early on. In 1970, he found his answer. Upon learning that the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, where he was then working, received grants from the Ministry of Defense, Grothendieck resigned.
Since then, however, the master has never stopped writing, corresponding, or working. In 1990, he entrusted his entire mathematical archive to Jean Malgoire. This former student, Professor the University of Montpellier, kept the Grothendieck archives at his home until 2010, when he deposited them at the University of Montpellier.
Unpublished manuscripts
The Grothendieck Collection comprises unpublished manuscripts on major mathematical theories of the 20th century, particularly in algebraic geometry. It represents the bulk of Grothendieck’s work from 1949 to 1991 and offers insight into the scholarly exchanges of a mathematician at the pinnacle of international research. It also provides material for studying the development of his body of work.
After inventory and conservation measures, these documents were digitized beginning in 2016. Since May 10, a significant portion of them (approximately 18,000 pages) has been freely available online. What can we discover there? Undoubtedly new flashes of genius, scattered throughout numerous and disparate writings.“Seeds that it will be up to us to bring to fruition,”suggests Jean Malgoire. In the realm of mathematics, Alexandre Grothendieck may not yet be done shedding light on uncharted territories.