Intellectual Mathematics

From the Intellectual Mathematics Manifesto by Viktor Blåsjö

Kant said: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one understanding without guidance from another. … Sapere Aude! Dare to know! Have courage to use your own understanding! Thus is the motto of Enlightenment.”

This is also the motto of Intellectual Mathematics. Stop thinking that a mathematical argument is a bureaucratic form submitted for approval to the Gods of Pedantry. A mathematical argument is written for you. Stop worrying about what “they” want you to do. Have the courage to think for yourself.

Have the courage to think for yourself.

He’s written a free calculus textbook available from his website.

Not Gandalf

But you’d be forgiven for thinking so.

It is Alexander Grothendieck (1928-2014), who was a famous mathematician in the area of algebraic geometry. Born in Berlin, his father was Alexander “Sascha” Schapiro (aka Sascha Tanaroff), an anarchist and descendent of bourgeois Hasids from Novozybkov, Russia, near the modern-day borders with Belarus and Ukraine. Grothendieck’s mother was Johanna “Hanka” Grothenieck, also an anarchist and a descendant of middle-class German Protestants from Hamburg. 

Grothendieck survived the Second World War and entered academia as a mathematician, making significant contributions in the area of algebraic geometry. He eventually became convinced that mathematics was immoral, and descended into a madness of religious passion. One presumes that the photograph above is from this later period. 

Via Cliff Pickover on Twitter

See also:

• Inference Review: Alexander Grothendieck, A Country Known Only By Name
• Wikipedia: Alexander Grobendieck
• SIAM Book Review: The Early Background of Genius