At 86, Britain’s preeminent mathematical matchmaker is still tackling the big questions and dreaming of a union between the quantum and the gravitational forces
Until two days back, the name, Alexandre Grothendieck, was vaguely familiar to me through my distant understanding of the mathematics he had done. I knew that he was responsible for a lot of upheavals in that field during the last century; other than that, Grothendieck remained very much outside the purview of my knowledge. Yesterday…
Writing a mathematical paper is both an act of recording mathematical content and a means of communication of one's work. In contrast with other types of writing, the style of math papers is incredibly rigid and resistant to even modest innovation. As a result, both goals suffer, sometimes immeasurably. The clarity suffers the most, which…