The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed.

THE ARTIST AND THE MATHEMATICIAN: The Story of NIcolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed

AMIR D. ACZEL

In the early part of the past century, influential French mathematicians such as Alexandre Grothendieck, Andre Weil, Henri Cartan, and others were all influenced by the work of a man known as Nicolas Bourbaki. But Bourbaki never existed. What began as a prank devised to trick first-year mathematics students at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in 1923 became a secret society of mathematicians, with rotating members, who collectively became known as Nicolas Bourbaki, complete with an invented family and background. The group's work under its pseudonym went on to profoundly influence 20th-century mathematics, including the new math movement that revolutionized school instruction in the 1950s. Bourbaki's influence went beyond math and introduced the notions of structuralism to philosophy, psychology, economics, and, indirectly, anthropology. That influence waned in the 1970s, but Bourbaki's legend lives on. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006, 239 p., b&w images, hardcover, $23.95.