7 Quotes by Alexander Grothendieck
Alexander Grothendieck was a German-born mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century. He was born on March 28, 1928, in Berlin, Germany, and spent most of his career in France. Grothendieck made major contributions to algebraic geometry, topology, and number theory, and his work had a profound impact on modern mathematics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 for his contributions to mathematics. Grothendieck was also known for his reclusive nature and his political activism, and he spent the latter part of his life living in seclusion in the French countryside. He died on November 13, 2014, in Saint-Girons, France. (Bio)
Alexander Grothendieck Quotes
Fertility is measured by offspring, not by honours. (Meaning)
Discovery is the privilege of the child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else. (Meaning)
I am not really doing research, just trying to cultivate myself.
If there is one thing in mathematics that fascinates me more than anything else (and doubtless always has), it is neither “number” nor “size”, but always form. And among the thousand-and-one faces whereby form chooses to reveal itself to us, the one that fascinates me more than any other and continues to fascinate me, is the structure hidden in mathematical things.
The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps.
The question you raise, ‘How can such a formulation lead to computations?’ doesn’t bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand – and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.
A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration… the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it… yet finally it surrounds the resistant substance.
― Alexander Grothendieck Quotes
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Tal Gur is an impact-driven creator at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 life goals around the globe. Tal's journey and recent book, The Art of Fully Living, inspired him to found Elevate Society.
