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/sci/ - Science & Math

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8999955 No.8999955 [Reply] [Original]

>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

>> No.8999983
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8999983

>57 is prime

>> No.9000020

>"Now now Alexander, we must show some self control."
literally my advisor when I tell him we should do the general case straight away

>> No.9000041

So is Grothendieck conformed a brainlet?

>> No.9000158

>feel good mathy feel from link
>As a thesis topic, Tate gave me the problem of proving a formula that he and Mike Artin had conjectured concerning algebraic surfaces over finite fields. One day he ran into me in the corridors of 2 Divinity Avenue and asked how it was going. "Not well" I said, "In one example, I computed the left hand side and got p13; for the other side, I got p17; 13 is not equal to 17, and so the conjecture is false." For a moment, Tate was taken aback, but then he broke into a grin and said "That's great! That's really great! Mike and I must have overlooked some small factor which you have discovered." He took me off to his office to show him. In writing it out in front of him, I discovered a mistake in my work, which in fact proved that the conjecture was correct in the example I considered. So I apologized to Tate for my carelessness. But Tate responded: "Your error was not that you made a mistake -- we all make mistakes. Your error was not realizing that you must have made a mistake. This stuff is too beautiful not to be true."

>> No.9000183

>>9000158
But Tate made the same mistake in believing him.

>> No.9000198

>>8999955
>Eventually, Grothendieck could stand it no longer and went to the blackboard and began writing down a proof for scheme
the utter sperg

>> No.9000201

>>9000041
By his own admission

>> No.9000205
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9000205

>>9000198

>> No.9000221

>>8999955
I swear you have to be an incomparable autist to both be interested in math as a discipline and to actually succeed in it at a higher level.

>> No.9000230

Kinda reminds me of this guy I had to work under.
>asks a plethora of questions about our work to probe our understanding
>berates us if we don't have an answer
>at one point, we all realize he doesn't actually understand shit

>> No.9000243

>>9000000