Talk:Alexander Grothendieck

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(See old discussion atTalk:Alexander_Grothendieck/Major_topics)

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics.
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Well, let's write now all these articles about his (and other people's) work :)

Thank you, Charles Matthews for your great article and comments. Still, I think claiming that Grothendieck's work is of axiomatic kind is precise only when referring to certain period. There is nothing about axioms is Esquisse. It's normal that style changes with time and I think it would be right if you corected this.

You wrote: The style of the mathematics is very distant from Kronecker's, though. It is axiomatic, and claims descent from David Hilbert's approach; as interpreted by Nicolas Bourbaki. Its influence spilled over...

I can't correct this because there is some error with this sentence. What means 'the mathematics'? Did you mean 'his mathematics of that period' which is OK for me or 'his mathematics' (which I consider as factual error) --Ilya 18:13, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's a fair comment: it is what Jean Dieudonné always said about him, but I know that it isn't really the whole story. So I have made some changes.

Charles Matthews 19:11, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In what sense is Grothendieck's work "scarcely credible"? This needs some elaboration and appears to be personal opinion. - Gauge 04:44, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The achievement is scarcely credible, if you simply look at how much mathematics came out of IHES in the period 1960-1967, say. The SGA series is a vast enterprise. Charles Matthews 08:04, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 20th century is over ... 2 Incorrect edit about death by User:Orz 3 87 letter 4 Grothendieck's parentage 5 No original research please 6 Was he Jewish? 7 FGA

[edit] 20th century is over ...

Permanently, as far as I know. So changing 'was' to 'is' breaks the line of thought. Charles Matthews 08:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect edit about death by User:Orz

Orz, in his last edit, deleted some content about Grothendieck's disappareance and added a comment saying he is said to have died in 1993. I think we would definitely require a citation for this kind of comment. Grothendieck legally transferred rights over his papers to Malgoire in 1995 and other mathematicians say they spoke to him in the mid 1990s (see AMS Notices articles cited). --Chan-Ho (Talk) 10:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

morover, a famous mathematician who is very often visiting ihes (let me not specify his name), told myself that "i have talked to grothendieck middle of 2004" and he added "he is enjoying very good health" but no more detail. ma. 26may2006.

[edit] 87 letter

I stubled upon an interesting letter [1], which charts some of grothendieck retreat from mathematics. Not sure if its worth including. --Salix alba (talk) 18:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Les Annettes July 8, 1987.

Dear Piotr Blass,

Thanks for your letter and MS. I am not going even to glance through the manuscript, as I have completely given up mathematics and mathematical involvements. If you complete your book, you may mention on the cover that it is based on my EGA IV (sic) notes, but you are to be the author and find your own title.

I have a foreboding that we'll contact again before very long, but in relation to more inspiring tasks and vistas than mathematical ones.

With my very best wishes

Alexander Grothendieck

[edit] Grothendieck's parentage

jinfo [2] gives the following information, from which it is clear that his father was Jewish and that the most reliable source, Grothendieck's friend Pierre Cartier, says that his mother was Jewish too. Note that even if his mother was not Jewish, he should be placed in the category Jewish mathematicians, as this includes people of Jewish descent.

According to a recent memoir in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Vol. 38, No. 4, 2001, pp. 389-408: http://modular.fas.harvard.edu/sga/from_grothendieck.pdf) written by the prominent mathematician Pierre Cartier, Grothendieck's father was a Russian Jew surnamed Shapiro and his mother a German Jewish women named Hanka Grothendieck. Cartier, a close acquaintance of Grothendieck, states: "what I know of his life comes from Grothendieck himself." Thomas Drucker's earlier account in Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists, edited by Emily McMurray (Gale Research, Detroit, 1995, pp. 821-823) states that Grothendieck's father was a Russian Jew named Morris Shapiro and that the name "Grothendieck" was not that of his mother, but rather that of a governess who cared for him in Germany between 1929 and 1939. The source of this account is the mathematician and Grothendieck biographer Colin McLarty, who has described it as "one version that Grothendieck has given." The most recent account, by Allyn Jackson in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Vol. 51, No. 9, 2004, pp. 1039-1040: http://www.ams.org/notices/200409/fea-grothendieck-part1.pdf), states that Grothendieck's father was a Russian Jew whose original name may have been Alexander Shapiro, but who later assumed the name Alexander (Sascha) Tanaroff, and that his mother was Johanna (Hanka) Grothendieck, a German Lutheran from Hamburg. This information is attributed to another Grothendieck biographer, Winfried Scharlau of the Universität Münster. As Jackson notes: "many of the details about Grothendieck's family background and early life are sketchy or unknown." According to all three accounts, however, Grothendieck's father was Jewish, and was deported and murdered at Auschwitz, and Grothendieck himself was sheltered (along with several thousand other Jews) in the French Protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in southern France.

--Brownlee 16:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The most authoritative resource for information on Grothendieck's life is the Grothendieck Circle at http://www.grothendieckcircle.org/. This contains primary sources from Grothendieck's parents and also points out the fact that Cartier's article has biographical inaccuracies. All sources except for Cartier's article identify Hanka Grothendieck as Lutheran. Allyn Jackson's article uses her autobiography Eine Frau as a source. In any case, the previous revert destroyed a lot of grammatical edits which should have stayed anyway. 128.148.123.6 10:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The most authoritative resource for information on Grothendieck's ancestry is Cartier's article, which is why jinfo.org accepts it. If any grammatical erors remain, please fix them.--Newport 19:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

This is wrong. See post and website above. It is absurd to state that jinfo.org is a more authoritative source on Grothendieck's ancestry than the Grothendieck Circle. Also, do not use reverts indiscriminately, unless you intend to fix the grammar yourself. 128.148.123.4 08:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The point is that Jinfo regards Cartier as the most reliable source. It violates WP:NOR to assert that the Grothendieck Circle is more reliable without providing a source that says so.--Newport 19:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason to favor the claims of jinfo over the Grothendieck Circle. jinfo is a less reliable source than that of Grothendieck Circle for it provides no contact information other than email nor the names of any individual who operates the webpage. It is impossible to gauge the credentials of jinfo for this reason. Quoting WP:V: Self-published sources (online and paper)

Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources. Exceptions may be when a well-known, professional researcher in a relevant field, or a well-known professional journalist has produced self-published material. In some cases, these may be acceptable as sources, so long as their work has been previously published by credible, third-party news organizations or publications. However, exercise caution: if the information on a professional researcher's blog is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.

Jinfo does not list any professional researcher nor journalist. If you feel that Jinfo does not fall under the given criterion for being a dubious source, please explain why. 128.148.123.43 22:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

128 is totally right. Per WP:RS jinfo is a self-published website which lists, comparatively, very scarce sources for its claim. It cannot be used as a source any more than jew watch can be. Think about it, Jew Watch has a clear anti-jewish bias and concurrently Jinfo has a clear pro-jewish bias. Any site of the like would.

Furthermore, no wikipedia user can make up their own definition for who counts as a "German Jew" or "Jewish mathematician." You can't say "Oh, a German Jew is anybody who is Jewish by religion, culture, self-association, or who has anything up to a Jewish great-grandparent." It's not our place to define how people identify or are identified. Simply because Grothendieck had a Jewish father doesn't automatically define him as a "Jewish mathematician" anymore than Marconi would be an Irish inventer because his mother was Irish. 72.144.60.231 04:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I checked the above mentioned texts and none of them convinced me. I propose mentioning in the article that his mother was Jewish according to some, and Lutherian according to others (as does jinfo, by the way). With cited sources, of course. Hopefully one day a more reliable source (or maybe a future biographer) will settle the point. Lenthe 06:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No original research please

Jinfo lists several sources and concludes that Grothendieck's friend is the most reliable. Jinfo thus asserts that Grothendieck is Jewish. It is original research to assert that another source is more reliable than Grothendieck's friend without a source to verify this.--Brownlee 14:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You appear to have missed the discussion directly above your post. Please check there for details. 128.148.123.7 15:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

What Lenthe thinks is original research. Wikipedia should just quote what sources say.--Brownlee 15:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your revert is not doing that. It seems you are placing too much weight on a source (Jinfo) that is not even considered reliable. 128.148.123.7 15:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Most editors who have looked at Jinfo consider it reliable. In any case, for Grothendieck it quotes three sources, so we can rely on those.

Don't forget to sign your name. Sure. Of those three sources, one states that his mother was Jewish, another states that his mother was Lutheran, and the third does not discuss his mother at all. Clearly not enough to make the assertion that his mother was Jewish. 128.148.123.7 15:44, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The edit by User:128.148.123.7 removing a source is not acceptable. You have to add sources, to give a proper survey of the evidence. Charles Matthews 16:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Sources have been added. The conflicts are mentioned. 128.148.123.7 16:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't yet looked deeply into this, but the German Wikipedia version is interesting, and the Scharlau material it links to. Charles Matthews 16:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Was he Jewish?

It seems this issue is being forced on this page. I find it distasteful, but we have rules for dealing with contentious matters. It is common ground that his father was a Russian or Ukrainian Jew. Apart from that, what do we have to go on? I have never heard that he was religious in any way.

I suppose the point should be made that he may well have been stateless; the French Wikipedia says so, and I heard this long ago also. We say he is a French mathematician and a German mathematician, even so. Therefore it might be considered that his paternal Jewish background is of at least as important a status. This is something to discuss.

Charles Matthews 15:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Religiousness is nothing to do with being Jewish. Einstein was not religious in any conventional Jewish sense, but was incontestably Jewish. The Wikipedia rule is that if a source says someone is or was Jewish, we are entitled to say so. I am extremely grateful to Mr Matthews for his comments.--Newport 16:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

To be correct, the Wikipedia rule says that a Jewish person is a person who has either converted or has a Jewish mother. In any case, the source claiming such facts must be reliable. I would say that it would be appropriate to not list him as a French or German mathematician either. Officially, Grothendieck was stateless except for his early life (The AMS article states this). One could say that he has as much a claim to being Russian through his father as he does being French or German. Certainly Grothendieck himself would have rejected being categorized into any such groups; it is mentioned in Allyn Jackson's article that he preferred jail to recognizing the sovereignty of a national government. His distrust for governments was well-known. 128.148.123.1 16:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Just so everyone here realizes, a person can be referred to as Jewish or half Jewish on Wikipedia only if a reputable source refers to them as that (same thing for anything else, athiest, Irish-American, Welsh, etc.). Regardless of their mother's, father's, whatever's background. You may not list a person with a Jewish mother as "Jewish" unless you have a source that explicitly calls that person "Jewish" themselves and likewise a person with a Jewish father or even paternal grandfather will absolutely be listed as Jewish if a reliable source refers to them that way. Don't bring up "Who is a Jew", because, aside from the fact that you may not mix-and-match definitions to decide who is a what (see the WP:NOR example of deciding who is or is not a plagiarist), the page presents several ways in which a person can be "Jewish", of which Charles Matthews has picked one, which he may not do. This is not up for discussion, negotiation - Wikipedia editors simply can not decide who is Jewish based on their favorite definition of the term (nor may they decide who is, again, Italian-American, etc.). This is the "standard" used for every and any Wikipedia article and it is the standard used for every X-American or X-whatever list. Now, regardless of the background of either his father or mother, the questions here seem to be A. Since JInfo refers to Grodenchick as Jewish, is JInfo a reliable soure? What is their source? Or B. Is there any other source out there that refers to him as Jewish? Mad Jack 17:09, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

he was born to a jewish family(father). so what? it is totally non-sense rule of wikipedia. marhahs 24sep2006.

[edit] FGA

i am going to add to the section "EGA and SGA" something about FGA without which, i think, something serious will be missing in this article. marhahs 24sep2006.