http://www.math.utah.edu/~honigs/Grothendieck.pdf
c Katrina Honigs
September 27, 2015
I met Alexander Grothendieck on January 2, 2012. As I made my way to
a car rental center in the outskirts of Toulouse that morning, with the sky still
dark, the displays on passing buses flashed between their numbers and “Bonne
Ann´ee”.
I was halfway into my third year of graduate school and had read a bit
of Alexander Grothendieck’s mathematical work and felt a sense of connection
with it. I found his writing to be generally very clear, and I liked his approach
to algebraic geometry. In my own career, I was at a point where I was not
only not making progress on solving any problems, but miserably unengaged by
my work. But despite the burnout, Grothendieck’s work remained an island of
enjoyment in an otherwise featureless sea. Grothendieck is unquestionably one
of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, and to a graduate
student all the way in California, his exit to live the life of a hermit, location
unknown somewhere in the Pyrenees of France or Andorra, rendered him a
practically mythical figure.
But I am driven to demystify – it is part of what motivates me to be a
mathematician – and when we tell ourselves and others that our heroes are
inhuman and on a pedestal that is not just high but unattainable, we are actually
pushing ourselves down rather than climbing. And so, following a decision to
attend a conference in France, some emails, a lesson driving with a manual
transmission, a session of studying maps, and a long conversation at the rental
car center made difficult by my limited French, that brisk but mild winter
morning found me driving through rural France, wildly hoping for a conversation
about mathematics, or that I might at least see that it was truly a real person
who did all the work with the name Grothendieck on it.
Lasserre is small and remote, but Grothendieck’s house is by no means the
isolated cabin in a dark forest that I had imagined when I first heard about
him. That area of the Pyrenees is lovely, and the drive through a rolling landscape
down lanes lined with sycamore trees featured views of fallow winter
fields and blue mountains swelling along the horizon that reminded me very
strongly of where I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians. The town
is so small that the houses do not have numbers, which, judging by the dubious
looks and patient explanations that addresses really should have numbers
that French postal workers gave me when I handed them my letters addressed
to Grothendieck, is relatively uncommon. Since I didn’t know which house in
Lasserre was Grothendieck’s, I chose to park in a convenient small gravel lot. I
was faced with a very finite number of possible houses since Lasserre consists of
1
the intersection of a few roads, and figured I would find my way after knocking
on some doors and inquiring where I might find the person who proved the
representability of the Quot functor. However, it wasn’t necessary to make inquiries
How my heart sings 