G-spots : Olmet-et-Villecun

Before we start the quest for the final G-spot, hopefully in time for Grothendieck’s 85th birthday, one more post on Alexandre’s ‘hippy-days’.

In the second part of Allyn Jackson’s “The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck” she tells the story that AG, while touring the US to spread the gospel of the eco-mouvement “Survivre et Vivre” (the deal was that he gave 1 math-talk if he was allowed to give another one on ecology/politics), met a graduate student of Daniel Gorenstein, Justine Skalba, who quickly became a G-groupie and returned with him after the US-trip to France, where she lived with him for two years (and had one child with him, John, who later also became a mathematician).

Allyn Jackson writes:

“In early 1973 he (AG) and Skalba moved to Olmet-le-sec (probably she means: Olmet sec, so without any additions), a rural village in the south of France. This area was at the time a magnet for hippies and others in the counterculture movement who wanted to return to a simpler lifestyle close at hand (I would have added: and, it still is). Here Grothendieck again attempted (he did this once before in his Parisian period, setting up a commune in Chatenay-Malabry) to start up a commune, but personality conflicts led to its collapse. At various times three of Grothendieck’s children came to live in the Paris commune and in the one in Olmet (probably this being: Johanna, Mathieu and Alexandre who even today maintain an alternative lifestyle). After the commune disolved, he moved with Skalba and his children to Villecum, a short distance away.”

As Yves Ladegaillerie tells Jackson, Grothendieck lived an ascetic, unconventional life in an old house without electricity in Villecun, about thirty-five miles outside of Montpellier. Ladegaillerie remembered seeing Justine Skalba and her baby there. Many friends, acquantances and students went to visit Grothendieck there, including people from the ecology movement.