Benjamin Labatut: When We Cease to Understand the World (trans. Adrian Nathan West) (NYRB 2020) [IBR2026] (opens in new tab)

The night gardener used to be a mathematician, and now speaks of mathematics as former alcoholics speak of booze, with a mixture of fear and longing. He told me that he had had the beginnings of a brilliant career but had quit altogether after encountering the work of Alexander Grothendieck, a world-famous mathematician who revolutionized […]