Interesting article - https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/31/alexander-grothendieck-huawei-ai-artificial-intelligence - but I'm surprised it doesn't mention the story told by Benjamin Labatut, In his book 'When We Cease To Understand The World', about the Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, who had worked on Grothendieck’s papers, and who in 2012 published online a 600 page mathematical proof nobody has yet been able to understand.

In 2014 Mochizuki went to Montpelier. He returned to Japan a changed man, left his post at the University of Kyoto, took down the proof and everything else he had published, just leaving the statement that in mathematics, some things must remain hidden 'for the good of all of us'.

Nobody knows what happened in Montpelier, but a nurse maintains that on his death bed in Montpelier hospital, Grothendieck’s only visitor was a Japanese man, who spent 5 days there. A few days later, a Japanese man was caught trying to set a fire outside the locked room in Montpelier University that contained the boxes of Grothendieck’s papers, that he had left to the University on the condition that they were never opened.

#mathematics #grothendieck #mochizuki #labatut