The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed

by Amir D. Aczel

Book Overview

Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product as well as a major force... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560259310
• ISBN13: 9781560259312
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Bourbaki -- Here, There & Everywhere

Amir D. Aczel's short text is a frustrating read. It starts with an account of Alexandre Grothendieck burning 25,000 pages of his mathematical work. He then drops out of the narrative. We then get introduced to the great force of 20th century mathematics -- the collective, Nicolas Bourbaki. Bourbaki represented an effort on the part of post-WWI French mathematicians to establish the "mathematics curriculum for courses of calculus and mathematical analysis" taught throughout French universities. The foundation upon which those courses would be founded eventually made its way across the Atlantic in the 1960s in the form of what was then termed, "the new math." Its starting point was the theory of sets. Or, as we learn later in the text, it is based on pre-existing points, and the goal of mathematics is to organize and give them structure. The influence of Bourbaki and its structuralism was, according to Mr. Aczel, pervasive, starting with the work of Claude-Levi Strauss. The problems with Aczel's book include: (1) despite its short length, it manages to be maddeningly repetitious; (2) the text stretches credulity in finding the influence of structuralism under every conceptual rock; and (3) the work of Grothendieck, whom Aczel assures us was one of the century's great minds, gets short shrift. At least this reviewer would have preferred more focus on the mathematical ideas of Grothendieck, and less about the influence structuralism beyond Claude Levi-Strauss' application of Bourbaki's structuralism to the problems of kinship. It's not that The Artist and the Mathematician is not informative, and at times even entertaining, the problem is that it could have been so much more.

Does a decent job for a 240 pages mass-market book

I was expecting something bad after reading the customer reviews (many 1 star). But no, I am satisfied so 4 stars. You have to consider that this book is a short, mass-market book. You can't expect to cover the intellectual/political/economical/cultural/... situation of the Bourbaki period and the biographies of all the great mathematicians of the group and the MATH in 214 pages of text. Aczel does a good job of presenting all the elements necessary to understand Bourbaki. I have the impression that the bads reviews resulted from the deception that it was not THE FINAL BEST BOOK that it could have been; maybe this book is still to be written but it's probably not for general public.

At least one other criticism false

I am writing this review, simply because I am a great fan of Aczel's other books -- fermat's last theory, entanglement, and his book on the discovery of the compass, and for another reason. Firstly, All of these were excellent!! Secondly, The criticism leveled against him by some writer who did a review for the post, reflects more on the sloppy style of that reviewer than it does on Aczel's scientific writing. The Post really should retract their review and get a proper review for his book. They owe him that much. It really is a sign of the dumbing down of our society that the Post can let stand this kind of mindless review. I am not associated with Amir Aczel in any way, and his current book might not be cracked out to be what the others have been. We all have off days, but I do know he deserves a better review than the Post gave him. -- as well as one GREAT BIG apology!! Sometimes reviewers try to elevate themselves, like fleas, by biting the backs of other people. I think this is what is going on here. Good luck . I, for one, shall buy this book!

The Origin of the Beauty - New Math à la Bourbaki

Before reading this book, I was ignorant of Nicolas Bourbaki, although I did my New Math education in France in mid 70s, personally experienced the abstractness of New Math syllabus based on Axioms and Structures. I love the Bourbaki's New Math with its rigour and structure, but I hate its extreme abstractness against our normal human thinking process from special cases to generalisation. The demise of Bourbaki does not change the abstract culture in New Math - unfortunately still an obstacle for math lovers coming from traditional math background. This book should go a bit deeper in math demonstration on some interesting topics like Levi-Strauss' Anthropology using Group Theory and Piaget's linguistic math structure, etc. Overall, I think Aczel had done a good job on the history side of New Math, although not enough to satisfy bigger appetite of mathematician readers who want more solid math illustrations.

Amusing tale of Mathematicians

There seems to be a trend in recent years to use mathematics as an integral part of the story in literature. The book, and subsequent movie, 'A Beautiful Mind,' and the Gwyneth Paltrow Broadway Play and subsequent movie 'Proof' come to mind. I wonder though if these aren't convincing us that all mathematicians are a bit nuts. Then again, maybe they are. This book, about a fmous mathematician that never existed, starts out talking about Alexandre Grothendieck who did some excepetional mathematics in his youth but then decided in 1991 to become a hermit in the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France. Grothendieck was just one of a group of mathematicians writing in the middle 1900's that put out several books on advanced mathematics. Writing as a group, they published the books over the authorship of Nicolas Bourbaki, a nom-de-plume. This is the story of their work. This is not a math book. And intended for a popular audience that's fair. Bourbaki's work was considered to be seminal in many areas, but in recent years has failed to live up to much of its earlier promise as more advanced math has come into being.