4 ms·
A nice anecdote about Poisson's proof (the double integral + polar coords trick): Grothendieck, widely considered the greatest mathematician of the 20th century
by ur-whale 5y ago
A nice anecdote about Poisson's proof (the double integral + polar coords trick): Grothendieck, widely considered the greatest mathematician of the 20th century didn't know about the proof [1]
Might an urban legend, but it's still interesting.
[1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5977/grothendieck-and-the-gaussian-integral https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5977/grothendieck-an...
- heinrichhartman 5y agoI think this is entirely plausible. Grothendieck did not walk the established paths, but invented lot's of new concepts as he was working on problems. IIRC he was largely an auto-didact in his early years. In his work he never tried to reconcile the existing theory, and somehow improve it. He started form a blank slate (see EGA/SGA/FGA series of books) and build-up the proper concepts (Schemes,K-theory,Categories) that would allow the problem to unfold in the most natural setting and slowly resolve itself: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/The+Rising+Sea https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/The+Rising+Sea Sometimes ignorance is a blessing. It frees you from keeping all the historic clutter in your memory, and see an un-distorted picture.
- syntaxfree 5y agoGrothendieck worked in algebra, this is analysis.
- tacomonstrous 5y agoHe started his career as a functional analyst, actually, but yes he was an algebraist by inclination.