“Today I am no longer, as I used to be, the voluntary prisoner of interminable tasks, which so often prevented me from springing into the unknown, mathematical or not. The time of tasks is over for me. If age has brought me something, it is lightness.”
Conversation
Replying to
There’s a trend there in super high level mathematicians going off the deep end - Godel, Nash, Kacyznski - Newton had a couple of nervous breakdowns if I recall
1
3
Replying to
A kind of arrested development I think. For geniuses, math becomes an early and absorbing retreat from reality traumas, and when they finally re-engage reality in late adulthood they only have the intellectual equipment of 12-year-olds to cope. The results are rarely pretty.
3
1
4
Show replies
Replying to
tbh I use how people react to Grothendieck as a kind of a canary for how tolerant they are of eccentrics.
People who are shitty about Grothendieck (or Perelman) are people to be wary of.
6




