you ever read a mathematician’s biography and get jealous of all the nonmathematical parts like the part where they acquired the patronage of catherine the great or the part where they had to be exiled from paris for unstated political reasons
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nothing interesting has happened to a mathematician since WWII. this is only a slight exaggeration
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Bro why you gotta do Grothendieck like this?
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he’s like maybe one of the few exceptions lol
supposedly he wrote something called “in praise of incest” at some point but idk if it’s available anywhere. this is the most interesting fact i know about grothendieck
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Hmm the monsieur doth protest a lot
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This is a somewhat more interesting fact than him fucking off to be a shepherd (or goatherd?) in the 1970s tho
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Another interesting Grothendieck fact: in 2012 (?), shortly before his death, he demanded that the works he's best known for be removed from all mathematical libraries
I can't find a source for this right now but pretty sure I remember this, how ppl were like lol nah
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Who're other exceptions? I can't really think of any. I guess von Neumann had a pretty interesting life but a lot of that was pre-WWII
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Replying to
someone else in the thread brought up kaczynski which, fair. you could also make a case for serge lang (AIDS denialist)