The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck

Abstract

This lecture will tell the extraordinary story of the life of Alexandre Grothendieck, starting with his childhood, through his early years in mathematics and his heyday as one of the outstanding leaders in the revolution that swept algebraic geometry during the 1960s. The lecture will also discuss his break with the mathematical world in 1970, when he waded into the turbulent waters of protest politics, as well as his later years, which were marked by new leaps of mathematical imagination, much soul-searching, and finally, isolation.