/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9010041
Holy fuck you're dense.
How old are you if I may ask and what is your background?

>In the early sixties, Grothendieck visited Harvard while Zariski was still a faculty member. Once, while Zariski was lecturing in a seminar, Grothendieck kept asking him why he didn't prove his result for all schemes, not just varieties, but Zariski simply responded that it didn't work. Eventually, Grothendieck could stand it no longer and went to the blackboard and began writing down a proof for schemes. While he did so, Zariski wrote down a counter-example. When Grothendieck realized he was wrong, Zariski said (in his heavily accented Russo-Italian English) "In my time, I have had to learn many languages." At this, Grothendieck turned bright red from embarrassment.

>Another time Zariski was lecturing and Grothendieck again asked him why he didn't generalize his work to schemes. This time Zariski merely said "Now now Alexander, we must show some self control."

>In a discussion with Grothendieck, Messing mentioned the formula expressing the integral of exp(-x2) in terms of pi, which is proved in every calculus course. Not only did Grothendieck not know the formula, but he thought that he had never seen it in his life.

http://www.jmilne.org/math/apocrypha.html