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The Artist and the Mathematician
Amir D. Aczel
The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed
Thunder's Mouth Press
September 2006
On Sale: August 28, 2006
272 pages
ISBN: 1560259310
EAN: 9781560259312
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to
appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published
through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product
as well as a major force behind an important revolution that
took place in the early decades of the twentieth century
that completely changed Western culture. Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki’s work, seems on the
surface to be an abstract field of human study with no
direct connection with the real world. In reality, however,
it is closely intertwined with the general culture that
surrounds it. Major developments in mathematics have often
followed important trends in popular culture; developments
in mathematics have acted as harbingers of change in the
surrounding human culture. The seeds of change, the beginnings of the revolution that
swept the Western world in the early decades of the
twentieth century — both in mathematics and in other areas —
were sown late in the previous century. This is the story
both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that
time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke —
because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his
day — never existed.
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