GROTHENDIECK & CONNECTING THE DOTS- I was recently surprised to find the name of a fellow I know in Grothedieck’s book as a sort of co-author/assistant. By serendipity I ran into him last night in the lobby of my hotel, which lead to a very very long conversation about the great man. It turned out that the fellow was one of Grothendieck’s last students, and drove him around the Paris area as G did not have a drivers license.
Few know that Grothendieck who struggled in school as his idea of math did not match the curriculum not only hated equations but struggled to understand them. His idea of abstraction is maximal, and his idea of mathematics is to connect the dots, exactly the opposite of the school teacher. Another person had told me that he went into a state of disgust when he saw textbooks.
Another attribute: G has very gentle personality with students but proved extremely cruel with anyone who was arrogant towards him.

 Alexander Grothendieck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org Alexander Grothendieck German:[ˈgroːtn̩diːk]; French: [gʁɔtɛndik]; born 28 March 1928 is a stateless mathematician born in Germany and raised in France, who is the central figure behind the creation of the modern theory of

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