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Hello, i am sorry for my bad english, i am a french student in Paris Université Pierre et Marie Curie. First i precise my post is not a controversial one, i am reading "Récoltes et Semailles" by Alexandre Grothendieck, according to him Deligne is a great mathematician but he is also a plagiarist and i want to know an other point of view. Must Grothendieck's talk be moderated ? Is it just wrong ?

Don't hesitate to correct my english to help me to improve it.

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16 
 In my opnion, this is not an appropriate question for MO, and it will not be appropriate to try to asnwer it. – Gil Kalai Feb 23 2010 at 22:27
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 This question is far too subjective and argumentative for MO. I'm voting to close. – Qiaochu Yuan Feb 23 2010 at 22:29
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 I don't see any harm in this sort of question. – Kevin Walker Feb 23 2010 at 22:48
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 I think that the question is okay, and of potential interest as history of mathematics, provided that we try to keep the discussion objective. – Greg Kuperberg Feb 23 2010 at 23:04
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 I am slightly torn on this, since I don't want blanket discouragement of attempts to discuss the history of mathematics; but I do feel that this particular discussion would generate more heat than light, or more hearsay than analysis. So I'm voting to close. – Yemon Choi Feb 23 2010 at 23:30
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closed as subjective and argumentative by Qiaochu Yuan, José Figueroa-O'Farrill, Reid Barton, Charles Siegel, Yemon Choi Feb 23 2010 at 23:30

1 Answer

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@Regen

The source of your quote, I believe, is the 1978 article that Tate and Mazur wrote in Science. They gave a surprisingly readable description of Deligne's work on the final Weil Conjecture (so called "congruent Riemann Hypothesis" ). An interesting comment in that article is that Deligne asked one of his school teachers about mathematics and the teacher gave him (at the age of 13 or 14) the first several volumes of Bourbaki; apparently this was Deligne's first introduction to "higher" mathematics. Quite remarkable.

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5 
 Do you mean Tate and Mumford's article "Fields Medals (IV): An Instinct for the Key Idea" (Science 202 (4369) (1978), 737-739)? sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/202/4369/737.pdf – Marko Amnell Feb 23 2010 at 23:25
I would also like to comment on Regenbogen's deleted answer (visible to users with 10k+ points): that very long article was self-published and not at all vetted. A number of people have called into question the author's assertions or the accuracy of his memory. Caveat lector. – Todd Trimble Sep 16 at 19:21

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