Has he?

It’s complicated. You end up talking about belief. About the nature of reality. Anyway, some of my fellow mathematicians would be entertained to hear abandoning mathematics presented as evidence of mental instability.

How old is he?

He’s forty-four.

And you went to France to accept a fellowship at his Institute.

I went to France to be with my brother. I didnt know if he was coming back. But yes. I wanted to go to the Institute. They were doing what I wanted to do.

You’d already graduated from the University of Chicago.

Yes.

At sixteen.

Yes. I was in the doctoral program. I still am, I suppose. I had no life, really. All I did was work.

If you had not become a mathematician what would you like to have been?

Dead.

How serious a response is that?

I took your question seriously. You should take my response seriously.

Are you okay?

Yes. Maybe I did sort of blow off your question. What I really wanted was a child. What I do really want. If I had a child I would just go in at night and sit there. Quietly. I would listen to my child breathing. If I had a child I wouldnt care about reality.

You surprise me.

Yes. Well.

Do you want to go on?

I’m all right. In any event Grothendieck and Motchane had a falling-out. Motchane told him that the Institute was accepting military money so that he would resign. Which he did. I’m not even sure if it was true. About the money.

Is he really a great mathematician?

Yes.

Is there anything he did that I might understand?

I dont know. He’s turned out more work than any five mathematicians should be expected to. Approaching Euler. Finally he set out to rewrite all of algebraic geometry. He only got through about a third of it. Several thousand pages. But he changed mathematics fundamentally. He led the Bourbaki group but in the end they couldnt follow him. Or wouldnt. Their mathematics was grounded in set theory—which was beginning to look more and more porous—and he’d moved a good bit beyond that. To a whole new level of logical abstraction. A new way of looking at the world. He was completing what Riemann started. To unseat Euclid forever. Ignoring for now the Fifth Postulate. The intrusion of infinity which Euclid couldnt deal with. When you get to topos theory you are at the edge of another universe. You have found a place to stand where you can look back at the world from nowhere. It’s not just some gestalt. It’s fundamental.

You committed yourself here.

At Stella Maris.

Yes.

If you get committed you get certified but if you commit yourself you dont. They figure that you must be reasonably sane or you wouldnt have shown up. On your own. So you get a pass as far as the records are concerned. If you’re sane enough to know that you’re crazy then you’re not as crazy as if you thought you were sane.