Discussion (2 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

rramadass•about 13 hours ago

Nice.

Another interesting article; The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki - https://daily.jstor.org/the-mathematical-pranksters-behind-n...

And of course wikipedia; Nicolas Bourbaki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki

Anybody here actually browsed/read/studied the Bourbaki books? How approachable are they and what is the easiest one to start with?

Any expository/explanatory/commentary/annotation of the texts for the mathematically inclined layman?

saghm•about 8 hours ago

I feel like the Wikipedia article does not explain the backstory well:

> Bourbaki was founded in response to the effects of the First World War which caused the death of a generation of French mathematicians; as a result, young university instructors were forced to use dated texts

Why would there not be textbooks after people died? Were they bringing the textbooks to the schools or something? Or were they saying that new textbooks weren't written because of the lack of French authors available? I hadn't thought that having textbooks maybe 15 years old would be a huge deal given the pace that math moves, but maybe that's only because the concepts for an undergraduate math course when I was in school were a lot further behind where the research is happening nowadays compared to back then.

Inside the Secret Math Society Known Simply as Nicolas Bourbaki

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Discussion (2 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews