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Alexander Grothendieck is one of the most famous and influential mathematicians of the 20th century, having largely single-handedly invented modern algebraic ge
by impendia 15y ago
Alexander Grothendieck is one of the most famous and influential mathematicians of the 20th century, having largely single-handedly invented modern algebraic geometry.
He was fond of working in generality rather than in specific examples. Once during a talk, he said "let p be a prime" and so on until a member of the audience asked him to pick a particular prime for the purposes of illustration.
"Okay, let p be 57."
Someone in the audience had to point out that 57 = 3 * 19.
- tokenadult 15y agoGrothendieck "died" in the sense meant by Paul Erdos (stopped doing new mathematical research) at a surprisingly young age, while Israel Gelfand kept going into his nineties, not "dying" (ceasing to be a mathematician) until he "left" (died in the usual sense of the term). http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion62.html http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion62.html Gelfand was a mathematician who also cared deeply about mathematics pedagogy, and his textbooks are delightful. http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773 http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773 http://www.amazon.com/Functions-Graphs-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/0486425649/ http://www.amazon.com/Functions-Graphs-Dover-Books-Mathemati... http://www.amazon.com/Method-Coordinates-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817635335/ http://www.amazon.com/Method-Coordinates-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817... http://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817639144/ http://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817639144... Gelfand poses delightful problems that give students a workout in arithmetic (and CAN'T be done with a calculator) and that build conceptual understanding and interest in higher mathematics.
- rmc 15y agoOne of the most famous mathematicians of 20th century? What about Einstein, Turing, Feynmann, Russell, Erdos, van Neuman, Gödel?