I am both surprised as how successful he was at remaining obscure, and yet how many on HN were familiar with his work and writings. I was briefly a math major

I am both surprised as how successful he was at remaining obscure, and yet how many on HN were familiar with his work and writings. I was briefly a math major at the university, I studied at a technical school in France, I read a lot on technical forums such as HN where some people seem to know his work, like many I am fascinated by geniuses and their eccentricities, I browse Wikipedia for fun, and yet I was totally unaware of his life and work. Maybe I'd heard his name in passing, but no mention of his talent or writings, or his eccentric life because then I would've remembered his name. I find it sad that he is so obscure, though I see that it was his wish. On the one hand, you want to respect someone who obviously had his own reasons for withdrawal, on the other it seems like a madman's wish to be erased from the history books and even from the annals of science. That's not how science works, and that he thought he could be the exception shows a disjunction. I don't want to imply it was a mental illness, but I'd like to read more to try to understand his state of mind. Now that he lived and died in (relative) obscurity, it won't hurt to learn about him and learn from him.