Allyn Jackson, “Comme appelé du néant—As ifsummoned from the void: The life of Alexandre Gro-thendieck”, Notices, October 2004 and November 2004.Grothendieck around 1936 in the garden of the Heydorn’shouse in Hamburg-Blankenese.Archive of Winfried Scharlau.

Grothendieck’s main activity with regard tothese goals was the foundation of a group initiallycalled Survivre and later on Survivre et Vivre:SURVIVREMouvement international pour la surviede l’espèce humaineAn international and interprofessionalmovement for the survival of humanity

Shortly after his official letter of resignation,on June 26, 1970, Grothendieck gave a lecture tohundreds of listeners at the University of Paris inOrsay in which he talked about all that had becomeimportant to him: the spread of nuclear weapons,the arms race, the threat to humanity posed bytechnological progress. He went so far as to callmathematical research dangerous because it ispart of this technological progress. The content ofthis lecture was later circulated in various unof-ficial manuscripts under titles such as “Respon-sabilité du savant dans le monde d’aujourd’hui: Lesavant et l’appareil militaire” (“The Responsibilityof Scientists in Today’s World: The Scientist andthe Military Establishment”).

he may have believed that hehad passed his peak and that thence-forth he would be able only to repeathimself with less effectiveness.

Comments in this direction havealso been made by the physicist David Ruelle, acolleague of Grothendieck’s at the IHES: After asuperhuman effort, Grothendieck had to admitthat he would never be able to complete the oeuvrehe had begun. It was as if he had set his mind onbuilding a cathedral with his own hands. When thewalls were two meters high, he had to stop.

For a while he identified withthe stigmatized Catholic nunMarthe Robin, who claimedto have lived for thirty yearson the Eucharist alone.

At the 1966 InternationalCongress of Mathematicians, Grothendieck wasawarded the Fields Medal.

Grothendieck began working on theEléments de Géométrie Algébrique (EGA) and heldthe legendary Séminaire de Géométrie Algébrique(SGA

This systematic rebuildingpermitted the solution of deep number-theoreticproblems, among them the final step in the proofof the Weil Conjectures by Deligne, the proof ofthe Mordell Conjecture by Faltings, and the solu-tion of Fermat’s Last Problem by Wiles.