Bourbaki and Grothendieck-Serre

This time of year I’m usually in France, or at least I was before Covid. This might explain for my recent obsession with French math YouTube interviews.

Today’s first one is about Bourbaki’s golden years, the period between WW2 and 1975. Alain Connes is trying to get some anecdotes from Jean-Pierre Serre, Pierre Cartier, and Jacques Dixmier.

If you don’t have the time to sit through the whole thing, perhaps you might have a look at the discussion on whether or not to include categories in Bourbaki (starting at 51.40 into the clip).

Here are some other time-slots (typed on a qwerty keyboard, mes excuses) with some links.

• 8.59 : Canular stupide (mort de Bourbaki)
• 15.45 : recrutement de Koszul
• 17.45 : recrutement de Grothendieck
• 26.15 : influence de Serre
• 28.05 : importance des ultra filtres
• 35.35 : Meyer
• 37.20 : faisceaux
• 51.00 : Grothendieck
• 51.40 : des categories, Gabriel-Demazure
• 57.50 : lemme de Serre, theoreme de Weil
• 1.03.20 : Chevalley vs. Godement
• 1.05.26 : retraite Dieudonne
• 1.07.05 : retraite
• 1.10.00 : Weil vs. Serre-Borel
• 1.13.50 : hierarchie Bourbaki
• 1.20.22 : categories
• 1.21.30 : Bourbaki, une secte?
• 1.22.15 : Grothendieck C.N.R.S. 1984

The second one is an interview conducted by Alain Connes with Jean-Pierre Serre on the Grothendieck-Serre correspondence.

Again, if you don’t have the energy to sit through it all, perhaps I can tempt you with Serre’s reaction to Connes bringing up the subject of toposes (starting at 14.36 into the clip).

• 2.10 : 2e these de Grothendieck: des faisceaux
• 3.50 : Grothendieck -> Bourbaki
• 6.46 : Tohoku
• 8.00 : categorie des diagrammes
• 9.10 : schemas et Krull
• 10.50 : motifs
• 11.50 : cohomologie etale
• 14.05 : Weil
• 14.36 : topos
• 16.30 : Langlands
• 19.40 : Grothendieck, cours d’ecologie
• 24.20 : Dwork
• 25.45 : Riemann-Roch
• 29.30 : influence de Serre
• 30.50 : fin de correspondence
• 32.05 : pourquoi?
• 33.10 : SGA 5
• 34.50 : methode G. vs. theorie des nombres
• 37.00 : paranoia
• 37.15 : Grothendieck = centrale nucleaire
• 38.30 : Clef des songes
• 42.35 : 30.000 pages, probleme du mal
• 44.25 : Ribenboim
• 45.20 : Grothendieck a Paris, publication R et S
• 48.00 : 50 ans IHES, lettre a Bourguignon
• 50.46 : Laurant Lafforgue
• 51.35 : Lasserre
• 53.10 : l’humour