On June 16, 2025, La Poste issued a stamp bearing the image of Alexandre Grothendieck, considered one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry. He is recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, both for his genius and his insights into his time. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966.
Alexandre Grothendieck (1928-2014) is considered one of the founders of modern algebraic geometry. He left a considerable mark on mathematics, of which he is also one of the most important and singular figures. He accomplished an immense body of work, explored today by specialists in fundamental mathematics. His name also serves as a reference for environmentalists to denounce the excesses of science.
Grothendieck's story begins in Berlin in 1928. His father, a Russian Jew, was an anarchist and activist. His mother, also an anarchist, came from a Protestant family in Hamburg. His childhood was marked from the start by the rise of Nazism, the Spanish Civil War, and a stay in a French internment camp. Miraculously escaping unscathed from anti-Semitic persecution after the fall of the Third Reich, his passion for mathematics and his perseverance led him to the heart of the intellectual emulation of his time. In less than fifteen years, he revolutionized mathematics, a field that would never be the same again after his time. While he had reached the height of his fame, the Vietnam War reawakened his anti-militarism, sparked his ecological commitment, and his critique of technoscience, gradually isolating him from academic circles. Grothendieck ended his career at the University of Montpellier and retired in 1988. He gradually cut ties with society and chose as a refuge a village in Ariège where he ended up living as a recluse, obsessed with the question of Evil on Earth. When he died in 2014, tens of thousands of pages were collected in his home, the result of more than twenty years of labor. They remain to be discovered.
