THE GROTHENDIECK RING IN GEOMETRY AND TOPOLOGY - M.F. ATIYAH
§1. The Grothendieck ring in homotopy theory
I am going to be talking about vector bundles, i.e. fibre bundles with fibre a vector space and group the linear group. Vector bundles are to the geometer what representations or modules are to the algebraist. In fact the modern algebraic geometer hardly distinguishes between the two.
[Sir Michael Atiyah, ICM 1962]
Can anyone clarify this quote from Atiyah? (I couldn't find any source)
